Although there has been much debate aboutwhether race has a biological or social basis, thebottom line is that race is a psychological realityfor many people.

虽然对于种族歧视究竟是关于生物种群还是社会因素仍然未果，但至少对多数人来说种族问题是一种心理现实性的反应。

That is, many folks assign other individuals to racialcategories based on their appearance, and thenmake assumptions about them.

这就是说，他们按照外貌将他人划分，然后做出假设。

But racial stereotyping goes beyond classifyingpeople into groups.

但种族刻板印象还远远不止如此。

When a group is assigned a negative stereotype, individuals that exhibit more of the physicalcharacteristics identified with that group suffer more discrimination.

当一个人被贴上低等族群的标签时，会遭受到更多的歧视。

For example, in a recent study, participants were asked to read one of four news articles about ahypothetical African American man.

例如在最近的一项研究中，测试者们被要求阅读四篇关于非裔美国人关于种族印象新闻的其中一篇。

The first story was about a professor receiving an award.

第一篇是关于一名教授获奖。The second was about an athlete, arole stereotypically linked to African Americans.

第二篇是一名非裔美国人的运动员。

The third was about a white-collar criminal and the fourth about a violent criminal.

最后两篇则是一名白领罪犯和一名暴徒。

No matter which story they read, all participants saw the same photo of the man.

不论选择哪篇，文章的附图都是同一名男子。

Despite that fact, when participants were asked to reconstruct the man's face on a computer,they gave the man more stereotypically African features, such as darker skin tones, if he hadbeen portrayed negatively as the white collar criminal, or-especially--as the violent criminal.

除去新闻内容，当参与者被要求在电脑上重塑这名男子的脸时，如果他曾被丑化为白领犯罪者,或者—尤其是暴力罪犯，他们赋予的是更多黑皮肤等非洲人特质。

The fact that they didn't associate more African features with the athlete, who was portrayedpositively, suggests the participants linked these features to negativity rather than stereotypes.

事实上，他们并没有将更多非洲人的特质赋予正面的运动员形象。这就意味着参与者将这些特质与负面形象联系起来，而非刻板印象。

And this happened regardless of the participants' self-reported racial attitudes, which meansthat they weren't even aware they were having these troubling responses.

而这一切和参与者自己的种族观念无关，他们根本就没意识到自己的答案是存在问题的。

If so, then it's not enough to study the way the media portray racial groups.

如若这样，对于媒体描述不同种族的研究仍然存在不足之处。

It's also important to study how the public interprets and remembers-or misremembers-thenews in a way that sustains racism.

但对于研究基于一定的种族歧视人们是如何理解、记忆或遗漏这些新闻信息的还是有其重要的价值。