Jorge Garcia's Definitional Account Of Racism

Jorge Garcia believes that the term “racism” is defined as an ill-will, a lack of benevolence, which is morally wrong. Simply, racism is created from hatred that originates in one’s heart. He describes this animosity with his coined phrase, the “volitional account of racism” (Garcia 251). Two that disagree with Garcia’s definition are Luc Faucher and Edouard Machery, whom take a psychological view, and state that racism is based off an “implicit racial bias,” that “people are not aware of having” (Faucher and Machery 54). They use social psychology to separate this idea from explicit biases, which are views that “people are aware of and can express” (Faucher and Machery 53-54). According to Faucher and Machery, “implicit biases” are measured
They may involve past experiences, such as a traumatic event. If a child was attacked by a dog at a young age, he or she will likely generalize and be afraid of all dogs until he or she learns that not all dogs behave the same. That person would not be considered racist since there is not a lack of benevolence represented. Garcia utilized an example of how a “racial ill” is not truly hate that comes from the heart, as shown in the fear some African Americans held against whites during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Garcia 257). Many lynchings occurred during this time period, and it would not be considered sinful of black people to have a sense of danger from whites. They had a substantial reasoning for being fearful since they were being terrorized and murdered. The causation for the despair originated from the actions against them by whites, not ill
An example of this is when a person encounters a black person that may possibly have a weapon in his hand. In the experiment by Payne, the two psychologists point out how the pictures of the faces of race had been chosen to have a gun, rather than a tool, than the ones of white people (Faucher and Machery 56). They argue that these results show that these split-second decisions represent the stereotypes some may have, which is morally wrong. This may not originate from a lack of benevolence, but of something “deeper” in a person’s psyche, rather than ignorance (Faucher and Machery 59). The two psychologists cover two figures for racism: the doxastic and behavioral models. The doxastic view states that racism exists if one “believes that there are races” (Faucher and Machery 44). The behavioral model is self-explanatory in which it is how one behaves to be racist against someone. These outlooks are different opponents of Jorge Garcia’s view that the vice of hate originates in the heart and can lead to someone becoming racist. The psychological perspectives of Faucher and Machery assist them in attempting to persuade Garcia that hatred is not the only way of defining racism. “Implicit biases” involvement in experiments regarding split-second situations show that stereotypes play a role