IAT

IAT is a project made at Harvard and can be found here: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/.
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I participated in a total of three implicit association tests: the African American – European American IAT, the Asian American – European American IAT, and the Gay – Straight IAT.

The results are the following for each IAT test:

• African American – European American: strong automatic preference for European American compared to African American
• Asian American – European American: slight association of European American with American and Asian American with Foreign compared to Asian American with American and European American with Foreign
• Gay – Straight: moderate automatic preference for straight people compared to gay people

I believe that these results accurately portrays my attitudes. I personally believe that each individual has a preference when it comes to race, gender, ethnicity, age, etc., when it comes to any sort of socialization although one may not wish to bring those preferences out to the open. As people, we have been trained since childhood (this is presumed that each individual has been raised in a “typical” household) to treat each other fairly no matter what our skin color may be, what gender we are, where we come from, etc. I know that I was constantly told by my parents and teachers that I should not be racist, sexist, ageist, etc., because that was not appropriate behavior. But, despite these attempted teachings, I witnessed a lot of racial slurs being thrown towards people of whom I shouldn't be racist, sexist, ageist, etc., towards.

I grew up in Toledo, Ohio; I originally came from New York City. My parents brought me to Ohio in 1992, where I attended school in Sylvania. My parents both speak broken-English. Communication has always been rough between parents and children. I imagine that my parents sometimes have trouble understanding us, as my two younger siblings and I have trouble understanding them. Essentially, I am American-born Chinese; I speak and write English; and I speak broken-Chinese.

Personally, I believe that communication is very valuable between family members and friends. Without it, one cannot perhaps even dream about being a part of a solid working community. I also believe in total honesty between people; I despise having and keeping secrets of all degrees. I truly believe that it is better to come clean with judgments and opinions; it is better to throw them out into the open (verbally) rather than finding things out later where it is most likely to cause additional chaos. I also value fairness with consequences. I believe that if one works hard to reach their goal(s), they will ultimately reap the benefit(s). And if one decidedly chooses not to lift their finger, then they are to suffer consequences.

A tradition my family kept for years is that my parents would close their business for a few days to travel. We usually do this on some special holiday or during the summer-- and my parents would take the immediate family to visit the extended family in New York. The sense of having “family” is very important; therefore, we (my parents especially) find it important to keep visiting and keeping in contact with family members on a daily or weekly basis.

I have zero tolerance for people's inability to differentiate other people's perspectives. There are many citizens that tend to think, in all sorts of situations, in their own point of view. They do not consider all possibilities of a situation, especially if it specifically deals with more than one person. Thus, in most cases, there is an uproar between such persons, with few looking like fools in the end.

Understanding my background and biases will be useful to me as a future teacher because I am now more exposed to my immediate reactions with certain classes of the people. I have become more aware of how I consciously think; meaning that I will be consciously aware of what decisions to make within certain situations to further educate myself as both student and teacher, such that will better aide future students more effectively.