WTF, Harvard???

So I made the unfortunate mistake of browsing the Book of Faces, and came upon this delightful video via .Mic

It used a clickbait title: "Are all white people racist? Yes"

As a white male, I decided to check this out.
He actually doesn't call White people racist, but rather indicates that every human has an automatic preference to a race; dependent on culture and social norms.

But then he decided to talk about the Harvard IAT test (Implicit Association Test) and how it can tell you if you are biased toward a certain race.

He made some great points, but the IAT is flawed, and I'll explain why...

For anyone who hasn't taken the IAT, this is why it's a flawed test...

The IAT tries to decided what your "automatic racial preference" is by telling you to click the "E" on the key board when you see a picture of a Caucasian person, and the "I" key when you see a picture of an African American.

After successfully identifying around 10-20 pictures, they then assign the "E" key to be "Good", and the "I" key to be bad. You then have about 10-20 words to categorize based on their positive or negative nature (e.g. Love, rude, disgust, triumph...etc)

One you have completed the task of correctly categorizing the words, they ask you to categorize both the positive/negative words along with the pictures of the humans base on race.

This is where the problem sets in.
They have conditioned you to use your left hand ("E") to be assigned to positive words and "white" humans; and the right hand "I" to be negative words and "black" humans.

The reason that's a problem is because they then, after 15 mins of conditioning you, switch which hand that categorizes the pictures of the humans.
If you hesitate to remember that your hands have switched, they consider that your hesitation toward that race.

The best scenario I can relate this flaw to is the Stroop Test...

I'm sure we've all had a good laugh with our friends trying to correctly say the word while our brains have a panic attack because the hue isn't the same.

This is the Stroop Effect.

The Stroop effect is the finding that naming the colors of color words (e.g. the words 'green', 'red', 'blue', etc.) is easier and quicker if the actual observed colors of the words match the colors that the words denote (e.g. the colors green, red, blue, etc., respectively) than if they do not match.

The IAC works similarly by depending on Speed Processing, but what they don't account for is the natural phenomenon of Selective Attention Theory. Once our brains have "mastered" a function it stops micromanaging (kind of like being on auto-pilot while doing a task you've been doing for long periods of time).

So please, remember that this is a flawed test...and I'm simply astounded that Harvard would be ok with this.

Tl;dr : seriously, read it.
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EDIT: Many people are bringing up the fact that if you re-take the test, the order of the "Good" or "Bad" vary/start differently.
THAT DOES NOT MATTER.
The reason it is flawed is because the outcome of the test is based solely on how quickly you can overcome your conditioned motor reflexes.

Also, this is not my way of trying to "prove I'm not racist." I agree with the guy in the video, we all have a racial biased and I have my own issues; same as everyone else.

...and yes, incognito mode; for porn. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LAST EDIT...
@RaisinZetaJones did his own bit of research and had this to say...

"You might want to mention that the creator [of the IAT] acknowledged the very problem you identified, and noted it takes -----40 trial runs----- over a period of weeks------ to eliminate the ordering artifact. I cited it all for you: http://imgur.com/gallery/eAd11/comment/968206229.

This directly contradicts the claim made on the IAT's own website here: "One very common question is about the order of the parts of the IAT. The answer is yes, the order in which you take the test can influence on your overall results. But, the effect is very small. So if you first pair African American (or Black people) + bad and then pair African American (or Black people) + good, your results might be a just a tiny bit more negative than they would be if you had done the reverse pairing first."
...You might also want to cite the part where in the Mic video the speaker claims that racial bias is learned. Specifically, at 0:45 seconds to 0:48 seconds, he says "But they aren't born with prejudice, but it's something we learn."

In fact, the IAT directly contradicts that statement as well: "The notion that children are born without preferences toward groups and acquire them as a result of being in a prejudiced culture is naïve. Frances Aboud showed that children explicitly express negative attitudes toward outgroups. We showed that 6 yr old, 10 yr old and adult Whites show the same level of automatic preference for their ingroup. What changes over time is the lowering of explicitly expressed preferences, with 6 yr olds reporting the strongest ingroup preference, 10 yr olds more moderate preference, and adults reporting the least of all. See Baron & Banaji, 2006; Dunham, Baron, & Banaji, in press."

In other words, the Mic video does the following:
-Misrepresents the IAT to suit their narrative, treating it as flawless when the creators admit it is deeply flawed, especially in ordering, and requires substantial controls
-Directly contradicts the IAT regarding children/learned experience (IAT claims racial prejudice is in-born and the idea that children are born without it is naive) when it suits their narrative

-Switches between suppressing its conclusions and supporting them dependent on how it fits the narrative
...
If you say things like "It often reveals an automatic preference for light-skin relative to dark-skin" before the test, it's going to have a huge effect on the stimulus-response questions. You are putting people in an operating condition where "light - good / dark - bad" is already in their mind before the trial. This is going to, 100%, influence the outcome.

The most glaring problem, then, is the it isn't a blind test. Information is given before hand. That's actually probably it's single greatest methodological flaw.
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(HOW ABOUT A MASSIVE ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR THIS BRILLIANT HUMAN BEING!
There was so much more that @RaisinZetaJones pointed out about the IAT, and I welcome all of you to reach out to him and ask. Send a complimentary upvote his way while you're at it!)

OP, out