Are Smarter People Less Racist? New Study Says More Intelligent People Just Hide Racism Better

It has long been accepted that racism and intelligence (either natural or acquired) have a negative correlation with each other. The general logic behind it is strong: Those who are intelligent are rational enough to realize all men and women are created equal and those who have received an education tend to be more open minded due to exposure and forward thinking.

But a new study from University of Michigan has some counterintuitive findings regarding intelligence and racism. Geoffrey Wodtke, a doctoral candidate in sociology, analyzed racial attitudes over 20,000 white subjects from around the country and looked into their cognitive ability and correlated it with attitudes about African-Americans. The average subject was 47 years old at the time of their interview and had 12.9 years of education.

"High-ability whites are less likely to report prejudiced attitudes and more likely to say they support racial integration in principle," said Wodtke, who is also affiliated with the Population Studies Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research, to Science Daily. "But they are no more likely than lower-ability whites to support open housing laws and are less likely to support school busing and affirmative action programs."

The most troubling finding was perhaps the fact that intelligent whites were less likely to support policies that would cure racial inequality. Consider this: 27 percent of the least intelligent white subjects supported busing programs, but only 23 percent of the msot intelligent white subjects supported the same programs.

"The principle-policy paradox is much more pronounced among high-ability whites than among low-ability whites," said Wodtke. "There's a disconnect between the attitudes intelligent whites support in principle and their attitudes toward policies designed to realize racial equality in practice."

"Intelligent whites give more enlightened responses than less intelligent whites to questions about their attitudes, but their responses to questions about actual policies aimed at redressing racial discrimination are far less enlightened. For example, although nearly all whites with advanced cognitive abilities say that 'whites have no right to segregate their neighborhoods,' nearly half of this group remains content to allow prejudicial real estate practices to continue unencumbered by open housing laws."

The findings of this study are significant, as they prove that an education or so-called intelligence does not make an individual more tolerant and less racist. Essentially, the study proves that when it boils down to things, education (or lack thereof) does not define your views on prejudice.

"More intelligent members of the dominant group are just better at legitimizing and protecting their privileged position than less intelligent members," explains Wodtke. "In modern America, where blacks are mobilized to challenge racial inequality, this means that intelligent whites say -- and may in fact truly believe -- all the right things about racial equality in principle, but they just don't actually do anything that would eliminate the privileges to which they have become accustomed.

"In many cases, they have become so accustomed to these privileges that they become 'invisible,' and any effort to point these privileges out or to eliminate them strikes intelligent whites as a grave injustice."

Given the changing demographics of America -- and the growing immigrant population -- the study sheds some important light onto whether or not racial prejudice still exists in the country and how much reform is still required.