Am I Freaking Prescient of What?
A while back I wrote about racism vs. tattoos, in the context of a story that claimed black players had more fouls called against them than white players in the NBA
My sense is that we make snap decisions about other people based on a
wide range of physical attributes, including height, attractiveness,
clothing, tattoos, piercings as well as visible racial characteristics
(e.g. skin color) and race-related appearance choices (e.g. cornrows).
It would be interesting to see where skin color falls against these
other visible differentiators as a driver of third party decisions
(e.g. whether to call a foul). My sense is that 60 years ago, skin
color would be factor #1 and all these others would be orders of
magnitude behind. Today? I don't know. While skin color hasn't gone
away as an influencer, it may be falling into what we might call the
"background level", less than or equal to some of these other effects.
It would be interesting, for example, to make the same study on level
of visible tattooing and the effect on foul calls. My sense is that
this might be of the same order of magnitude today as skin color in
affecting such snap decisions.
In a follow-up I posited that tattoos may be the new black.
"Some San Antonio apartment complexes are refusing to rent to people with tattoos and body piercings."
