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Arson attacks paralyze French high-speed rail network hours before start of Olympics, the Obamas endorse Harris for President; A NY county creates facial recognition, privacy protections; Art breathes new life into pollution-ravaged MI community; 34 Years of the ADA.

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Harris meets with Israeli PM Netanyahu and calls for a ceasefire. MI Rep. Rashida Tlaib faces backlash for a protest during Netanyahu's speech. And VA Sen. Mark Warner advocates for student debt relief.

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There's a gap between how rural and urban folks feel about the economy, Colorado's 'Rural is Rad' aims to connect outdoor businesses, more than a dozen of Maine's infrastructure sites face repeated flooding, and chocolate chip cookies rock August.

Study: Racial prejudice related to where you live and learn

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Monday, February 19, 2024   

The city where you live could be making you, your family and your friends more unconsciously racist, or by contrast, it could make you less racist.

Study findings from New Mexico's Santa Fe Institute show how population, diversity and segregation combine to form a person's unconscious racial bias.

Andrew Stier, a psychologist, postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and lead author of the study, examined why it is true in some cities more than others. He said the research showed those who rub elbows with many different kinds of people revealed less prejudice.

"You learn to do that because you interact with people that are different from you, and you learn something that is not a stereotype of about them, and you think of that person as a person," Stier explained.

Stier pointed out diverse interactions force people to adapt to new situations and learning. The study is based on data from the popular online "Implicit Association Test," which asks volunteer participants to categorize their response when given a pairing of white or Black faces with positive or negative words. A faster association of white equals "good" or black equals "bad" can show inherent racial bias.

To build their model, the researchers took the average bias scores from almost 3 million individuals in different geographic areas and linked them to racial demographics and population data from the U.S. Census. Stier emphasized many cities create dense and diverse networks of social interaction, but not all, including Chicago where he lived for 10 years.

"If you have a city that is very diverse, but very segregated like Chicago is, that diversity doesn't get you that much in terms of not being racist," Stier observed. "It's not just the psychology but also who you can access and what types of opportunities you can have."

He noted in cities where people cannot encounter and interact with people and institutions used by other groups, racial biases create major barriers to equity and amplify disparities including access to medical care, education, employment, policing, mental health outcomes and physical health.


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