After a recent event where i spoke about racial identity, a
white woman sidled up to me, leaned in close so no one near us
could hear and said, "I'm racist." Many people would be
repelled. I was entranced. Here was someone who could tell me
firsthand how the racist mind works. Social scientists have done
studies on Klansmen and neo-Nazis, but those sorts of people are
outliers, socially and mentally, while this woman seemed
indicative of the sort of mind-set we'd be most likely to
encounter. She seemed normal. So I decided to talk to her and
find out how her mind worked. Studies show that most people have
some sort of prejudice or bias. "Decades of cognitive bias
research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases
lead to discriminatory actions, even when an individual does not
want to discriminate," writes Michelle Alexander in her book The
New Jim Crow. "The fact that you may honestly believe that you
are not biased against African Americans, and that you may have
black friends and relatives, d