re: #885 garhighway

Ain’t it? There are lots of ‘em, too.

Here’s an interesting tidbit:

I took the test in regards to race about three years ago, and again about a year ago.

Three years ago, I was living in the Tenderloin, which is a slum neighborhood in San Francisco. It has a high percentage of black residents and transients, a lot of drug dealing, a lot of petty crime. So, basically, I saw high numbers of black people involved in crime every day, as well as just behaving generally piss-poor. When I took the test at that time, it showed I had a high negative association with blacks, and a positive one with whites.

When I took the test last year, I was living in the same neighborhood I am now, Western Addition, a neighborhood with a lot of projects, but well-kept-up projects with a lot of involvement from local churches and community groups. I see very little crime, and I see lots of happy black schoolchildren every day, the three black barbershops on Divis that are always full and vibrant, and a local gospel church where I can hear a joyous noise every Sunday. When I took the test a year ago, I had no implicit association of positive or negative for blacks versus whites. Oh, and Obama got elected too— I don’t know how much to count that.

I just think that it’s interesting that I had such wildly different results, and that I can (unscientifically, but compellingly) point to a reason for it.