Don’t Shoot Til You See The Whites Of Their Skin

I picked up a link to this little ‘racism’ test online, and thought I’d give it a whirl on my lunch break.  The test shows you pictures of whites and blacks (and I think a coupla mexicans, I was too busy shooting to verify) holding guns and holding cellphones, beer cans, and their wallets in various environments.  It then measures how long you take to shoot the armed black, the unarmed black, the armed white, and the unarmed white.  I took the test twice, and whilst my times got better, I couldn’t shake the fact that I shoot armed blacks faster than armed whites. 

Which doesn’t make sense to me since it’s actually harder to distinguish the gun in a black hand then it is in a white’s hand.  So perhaps the test does have some merit.  I also waited longer to holster my gun on unarmed blacks than I did on unarmed whites.

Here are my stats below, it should be pointed out that on my first run, I waited too long and was ‘shot’ by an armed black, on my second run, I shot an unarmed white kid who should not have been holding his cellphone like that.

Game Over
Your Score:  700
Average reaction time:
Black Armed:608.72ms
Black Unarmed:707.8ms
White Armed:642.96ms
White Unarmed:671.28ms

Game Over
Your Score:  725
Average reaction time:
Black Armed:577.64ms
Black Unarmed:688.44ms
White Armed:607.88ms
White Unarmed:663.28ms

~ by chrismcdevitt on April 7, 2008.