Although overtly expressed racial bias has diminished dramatically over time (Schuman et al. 1997), social scientists have uncovered several forms of racism that have gone underground, processes that are subtle and that probably operate outside the awareness of those involved. Important examples include aversive racism (Gaertner and Dovidio 1986), in which white liberals may be unaware of their early-learned negative attitudes about blacks and how those attitudes shape their behavior; stereotype threat (Steele and Aronson 1995), in which the intellectual performance of high-aspiring and achieving African Americans is hampered by their concern over confirming negative stereotypes about their racial group; and the unspoken processes through which performance expectations associated with status identifiers such as race work through interpersonal interactions to produce different performance evaluations that reinforce preexisting social hierarchies (Ridgeway and Erickson 2000). The back-door-to-eugenics stands among these phenomena. Our findings warrant concern that the modern genomic revolution, in both obvious and subtle ways, may enable a resurgence of the idea that racial groups are importantly and essentially different (Morning 2008).
