{"id":10244,"date":"2010-11-26T00:59:29","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T00:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=10244"},"modified":"2014-11-08T18:57:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-08T18:57:15","slug":"new-research-explains-why-we-see-barack-obama-as-%e2%80%9cblack%e2%80%9d-rather-than-%e2%80%9cwhite%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=10244","title":{"rendered":"New research explains why we see Barack Obama as \u201cblack\u201d rather than \u201cwhite\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/news\/news\/otago015422.html\" target=\"_blank\">New research explains why we see Barack Obama as \u201cblack\u201d rather than \u201cwhite\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>News of Otago<br \/>\nUniversity of Otago, New Zealand<\/p>\n<p>2010-11-25<\/p>\n<p>Why do people tend to see biracial individuals such as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Barack_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Barack Obama<\/a> as belonging to the minority group in their parentage rather than the majority one? According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=10241\" target=\"_blank\">new studies<\/a> led by a University of Otago psychology researcher, this phenomenon\u2014known as \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=86\" target=\"_blank\">hypodescent<\/a>\u201d\u2014can be explained by underlying mechanisms in how human brains learn and categorise groups.<\/p>\n<p>Otago Department of Psychology Associate Professor <a href=\"http:\/\/psy.otago.ac.nz\/staff\/halberstadt.html\" target=\"_blank\">Jamin Halberstadt<\/a> says that previously, the hypodescent phenomenon was presumed to be a product of one of several motivations: for example, to deny rights to minority group members, or to grant rights to restore historical inequities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThrough our face perception research we show that hypodescent need not be motivated by prejudice or anything else, and that the same minority-biased perception of mixed-race individuals can emerge as a simple result of how our brains learn new groups,\u201d Associate Professor Halberstadt says&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo when people encounter biracial individuals, who exhibit features of both majority and minority groups, <strong>their minority features are more influential.<\/strong> In other words, Barack Obama is \u201cblack\u201d because, due to most people\u2019s learning history, his dark skin is especially strongly associated with that category,\u201d he says&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.otago.ac.nz\/news\/news\/otago015422.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New research explains why we see Barack Obama as \u201cblack\u201d rather than \u201cwhite\u201d News of Otago University of Otago, New Zealand 2010-11-25 Why do people tend to see biracial individuals such as Barack Obama as belonging to the minority group in their parentage rather than the majority one? According to new studies led by a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,125,8,394],"tags":[4500,1000,4207],"class_list":["post-10244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-jamin-halberstadt","tag-new-zealand","tag-university-of-otago"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}