Finding Racial Bias
-McKenna Schilling-
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Survey Link Here:
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Racial and Religious Bias in Correlation to Possible Traumatic Events
Racial and Religious Bias in Correlation to Possible Traumatic Events
How do traumatic events influence how people view and form different racial stereotypes and biases? Specifically when race is a factor involved in the historical event. This research focuses on analyzing the before and after effects of generational race perception surrounding specifically the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Research Question
“Do people who experienced the possible traumatic event of 9/11 firsthand have a different bias or stereotypes towards Arabic people, versus people who did not experience this event firsthand?”
Significance or Purpose of Study
Significance or Purpose of Study
The purpose of this research is to attempt to isolate just one of the reasons behind why and how people form racial stereotypes. This research aims to find a direct correlation between living through a traumatic historical event and thereafter developing a racial bias. More specifically, analyzing in a more narrowed scope if people who are residents of the United States who lived through the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack have more of a racial bias present than those who did not live through this event. This was done through participants filling out an anonymous survey with 50 close-ended questions, 46 of these questions relating to the topic of 9/11 and people of Arabic ethnicity. These questions aimed to gauge people's perceptions of 9/11 and Arabic people. Two different age groups will be selected as the cohorts to take this survey and their response to the questions asked will be compared. The research method used in this study is Descriptive Research to gather quantitative data through an anonymous survey over a period of time which allows the analysis of patterns within how participants answered the questions in the survey with the goal of making a generalized trend of the population as a whole. Allowing conclusions to be drawn about the evidence collected about the state of affairs regarding the issue of racial stereotyping after 9/11 towards Arabic people. The results from this research studied yield to be inconclusive. This is because of limitations with meeting sample size requirements and too large of a deviation between the amount of participants in each cohort. The results to each question asked were to spread out to make a definitive conclusion that can be applied to the United States Population as a whole.
Problem Statement
Problem Statement
There is a problem in our society with racism and racial stereotyping. This problem is not new however, in fact, this problem has been embedded deep within our society for hundreds of years. Despite efforts over many years to help bring these problems in our society to the surface to solve, racial stereotyping, and racial biases still exist. This problem has negatively impacted minorities and people all over the United States. One possible cause of this problem is traumatic events that people live through to help aid and influence them into forming or help them reaffirm their previous beliefs surrounding race. This research will focus on the racial bias and racial stereotyping towards Arabic people that has occurred as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attack. Specifically how a person's age during the attack affects how they feel towards Arabic persons.
Hypothesis and Assumptions
Hypothesis and Assumptions
The hypothesis for this experiment is that it is believed the cohorts will have a difference in their answers they give to the close-ended questions in their results. The cohort that is made up of the 38-46 years olds will have a more present racial bias and more racial stereotyping present than the second cohort made up of 18-26-year-olds. This is possibly because of the difference in events that the people in these two cohorts have been through and how living through these different events have influenced their answers in the survey.
Proposed Method of Study
Proposed Method of Study
This study uses a Descriptive Research Method to gather quantitative data through a anonymous survey over a seven day period of time which allows the analyses of the bigger picture, that being, common frequencies and patterns within how participants answered the questions in the survey with the goal of making a generalized trend of the population as a whole. The survey involved in this study has a total of 50 questions, one of which is a question asking participants to sign a consent form. Another two of these 50 questions is, one, asking participants to confirm their age, to make sure they are in fact in one of the age cohorts. The other is asking to confirm they are in fact residents of the United States. Two age cohorts were selected to participate in this study. One cohort being those who lived through the event of 9/11. By living through the event of 9/11 this cohort was exposed to the possible traumatic effects this event may have left within them. This cohort is ages 38-47, meaning they were born in the year 1975-1983. The other cohort is younger, these are the participants that have not lived through 9/11 and have only learned about it. This cohort is aged 18-26 years old being born in the year 1996-2004. By all the participants being above 18 years old it guarantees everyone has learned about some aspect of 9/11 and who initiated and carried out the attack. And by choosing one age cohort that lived through 9/11 and one that did not allow a comparison to be made about how this event possibly affected them differently. A geographical cohort was also selected for this study, only residents of the United States were allowed to participate in this study. The participants were limited to being residents of the United States because although 9/11 is widely known by most of the world this event took place in United States ground, so residents of the United States would know this event best. This research also follows a single-blind research technique. This technique is used to get the most unbiased and truthful answers during a study. To achieve this, only the researcher knows which type of intervention the participants will be and are receiving until the study is over. This was a necessary step in this research because by including this method the most truthful and unbiased answers could be collected from participants. To achieve this in the survey six of the most prevalent racial groups in the United States were chosen to also be discussed in this survey. One of these groups being Arabic people and the other five being the other most prevalent racial groups in the United States. These groups were White, Hispnaic or Latino, Arabic, Asian, African American or Black, and American Indian people. For every question asked about Arabic people in the survey the same question was asked about each racial group, each question formatted the same. This survey also asked about religion as well, still using the same technique, six regions were chosen to have questions pertaining to them. These religions were also chosen as they are the most preventlant in the United States. Every question asked about Islamic religion was repeated five other times for each religious group including Christianity, Sikhism, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. All sects, branches, and denominations were included under the broader title of “Christianity”, “Islam”, “Sikhism”, “Judaism”, “Hinduism”, “Buddhism”. For each of these questions participants were asked to respond to the statement using a Likert scale of how the statement applied to them. There were also a total of 11 possibly traumatic events that occurred all around the world including 9/11 that participants were asked to share how they feel about each event (“Cold” = emotions/feelings such as scared, sad, not welcoming, blue, and affectionless. “Neutral” = feeling indifferent, no emotion present in particular, and a lack of preference one way or the other. “Warm”= emotions/feelings such as happiness, excitement, joy, enjoyment, and bliss.) All of the events chosen were events that somehow involved at least one or more of the other racial and religious groups involved in the other survey questions. By designing the survey this way with so many questions is aligned with the single-blind research technique. So although there were a total of 47 actual closed answer response questions, only six of those questions related to Arabic people, and 9/11 which are the only ones discussed and used in this research. However by allowing the participants to think every question’s answer is equally important the results yield unbiased and true answers.
Survey Debrief
Thank you for taking the time to fill out the survey and for volunteering to be a part of this research study. This survey was completely anonymous so no one will ever be able to identify the participants in this study. The goal of this research is to analyze and show possible racial and religious bias that may be present in people from living through possible traumatic events. The value of this research is to isolate possibly just one of the reasons or answers behind why people form racial stereotypes in the first place, and how living through distressing events surrounded by race can be a season for people forming racial stereotypes and biases. The survey in this survey has a total of 51 questions including the consent form, and the qualifier questions. This survey has a total of 47 questions asking participants to answer questions regarding race, religion and historical events and their mood/feelings towards the content discussed in each question. However, this survey and research uses a single-blind research technique. This is a research technique used in many different varieties of research clinical trials. This method means that only I, the researcher doing the study, knows which type of intervention the participants in this survey are receiving until the survey is over. This research method is used with the goal of making the results of the study less biased. This means that in my survey although a total of 47 questions were asked, only 7 of these questions will be analyzed in my research. And only the answers to these 7 questions will be looked at in my research. These 7 questions were the questions that related to Arabic people, Muslim people, 9/11 and those who subscribe to Islam. This was the only way to truly get unbiased answers to my questions. By basically putting my research questions into disguise with a cover. To be clear only the questions and answers to these 7 questions will be analyzed in my research and even after submitting their responses participants still have the option to pull their response form the study.
Results
Results Continued
Since this research study uses a single-blind research technique not all the answers to the 47 questions were used to draw a conclusion from this research. This is because the study only focuses on the questions and answers pertaining to Arabic and Muslim people and 9/11. There were a total of six questions asking participants statements about how they feel about Muslim and Arabic people and they were asked to choose an answer on a Likert scale the option being Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree and Strongly Agree. And there was one question asking participants to express how they felt about 9/11 as an event using the predetermined answer choices of Cold, Neutral or Warm. These seven questions will be the only questions analyzed in this research study. Out of a total 18 qualified responses to the survey, 13 participants were in the age cohort ranging 18 to 26 years olds and five participants were in the age cohort ranging 38 to 46. When participants were asked to label how they feel towards 9/11. They were given the choices of responding with “Cold”, “Neutral” or “ Warm”. When asked, “When I think of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center (9/11) in Lower Manhattan in New York City I feel ____.” Majority of participants responded with “cold”. This was previously predicted because it can be assumed the American public will not think of 9/11 as a “warm” event. From these results the conclusion can be drawn that out of the 18 participants in this study majority labeled 9/11 as a cold event. The next question asked then states “I am often unsure how I should present myself around Arabic people specifically in heavily trafficked public places”. Majority of participants aligned on the disagree side of the scale except for one person, an outlier, who answered “strongly agree”. It can be concluded that out of the 18 participants in the study the majority do not feel unsure of how they should present themselves around Arabic people. When participants were then asked the question “It makes me seldom uncomfortable to see Arabic people in public practicing their preferred religion”. To this question most participants responded that they “strongly disagree” or they “disagree” saying it does make them uncomfortable to see Arabic people practicing their preferred religion. Compared to all the other questions in the survey participants mostly responded one-sided with this question. The answers participants provided to this question showed the most prevalent bias present in comparison to all other questions. This was not an expected result from this question but through these results it can be concluded that out of the 18 participants the majority felt uncomfortable to see Arabic people practicing their preferred religion in public. When participants were asked to respond to the statement “When I see a person or group of people who are Arabic I seldom think of possible unlawful and violent extremist activity they could be engaging in that could hurt others for a personal, political, or social gain”. To this question the majority of participants responded evenly across the board with only a one person difference between answers. Meaning that the results to this question were to spread out to be able to draw an accurate conclusion about how the participants felt this statement applied to them. These results yielded to be inconclusive due to limitations with meeting the sample size and the lack of a clearly seen bias. From these results alone out of all the 18 participants the conclusion can be drawn that there is no difference in an inert racial bias between those who lived through 9/11 and those who did not towards Arabic people.
Conclusion
The hypothesis made for this research hypothesized that the older age cohort who lived through 9/11 would show more of a racial bias in their responses to certain statements about Arabic people than the younger age cohort would when responding to the same statements. The results from this study yielded to be inconclusive. This because of limitations present that conflicted the ability to form and apply an accurate conclusion to the United States population as a whole. The results for all the questions in this study were to spread out to make a conclusion and confidently apply it to the United States as a whole. However, it can be concluded that out of the 18 participants in the survey there was no racial bias easily present in the difference in answers between the two age cohorts. This refutes the hypothesis made in the beginning of this study. If limitations in this research were not present a conclusion could be drawn from this research and applied to the population of the United States as a whole.
Findings/Implications
Although this research paper and study have been inconclusive in terms of being able to identify patterns or trends of the United States population as a whole, it has scraped the surface in what is an ongoing battle of racial stereotyping and emerging biases in American society. By continuing to develop this research and have more participants and apply it to everyday scenarios a cause and effect relationship can be found between people experiencing a traumatic event surrounding race and developing a racial bias. If this research is furthered it can be applied to not only why there is a bias towards Muslim and Arabic people but other racial minority groups in the United States as well. This research is just the beginning of explaining how biases truly affect people, and how and what can be done about this ongoing epidemic in American society.
Most Important Sources
“Terrorists are alway Muslim and Never White”
-The Fordham Law
“Islamophobia pre- and post-September 11th, 2001”
“Critical race theory: An introduction”
-New York University Press, Richard Delgado
"RACIAL PROFILING AND ISLAMOPHOBIA"
Definitions
Definitions
Stereotype: a fixed and oversimplified general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.
Bias: the tendency to favor or against one person(s), or thing compared to another, usually in an unfair manner.
Racism: the belief that people of some races are inferior to others, and the behavior which is the result of this belief, in the form of prejudice, discrimination or antagonism.
Researcher/Contact /information
Researcher/Contact /information
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