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  • Essay / Black on Black Racism: The Black Lives Matter Movement

    Continuing instances of police shooting unarmed African Americans have sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement. This activist movement against police brutality quickly attracted public attention. Americans argue intensely over whether or not police are biased against African Americans, but they have not reached an agreement. Some insist that all Americans discriminate against African Americans, while others believe that the American people do not discriminate against them. African Americans are at the center of discrimination issues. However, when the public focuses all their attention on African Americans, they fail to realize that African Americans are not the only ones who experience discrimination. In the article “Black-on-Black Racism: The Hazards of Implicit Bias,” Johnson discusses the controversy. whether or not Americans are prejudiced against minorities. Throughout the article, he uses the Implicit Association Test (IAT), an assessment of racial bias (Johnson), as a reference. It examines respondents' level of implicit bias toward African Americans by asking them to sort a group of words as positive or negative and quickly sort images of faces as black or white people (Johnson). The result of this test reveals that in general, participants, including blacks, are more likely to associate black faces with negative words (Johnson). Johnson's article argues that implicit bias against African Americans exists in observable ways today. Although Johnson is African American, his IAT score reveals that he also has a slight disdain for his own race. According to him, racism happens simultaneously to black people and through black people. Stereotypes that demean black people have also caused them to look down on their own race and contributed to the growth of implicit bias toward every American (Johnson). Additionally, implicit bias does not only apply to discrimination against African Americans. Different people may unconsciously target and discriminate against different groups. Johnson published his article on The Atlantic, an authoritative website that includes news and analysis on politics, business, culture, technology, and more. His target audience appears to be all Americans, since he stated in his article that almost all Americans have an implicit view. prejudice against blacks. With support from all sources, Johnson addresses society's social problem: public prejudice against blacks has caused black-on-black racism. When a person denies racism against black people, they are racist against black people.