Compounding the effects of these unconscious cognitive processes is what researchers in the past decade have come to recognize as a pervasive “conflict between the denial of personal prejudice and the underlying unconscious negative feelings and beliefs.” Recognition of this conflict runs across a number of different models that attempt to explain contemporary racism and sexism. These models share in common the conclusion that as a consequence of this conflict, discrimination is most likely to occur in contexts where it can be justified as something other than discrimination. Studies of “aversive racism” are especially interesting and potentially problematic for employment discrimination law, as they focus on the unconscious behavior of people for whom being unbiased is an important part of their self-concept. Research done by proponents of the aversive racism framework demonstrates that “many people who explicitly support egalitarian principles and believe themselves to be nonprejudiced also unconsciously harbor negative feelings and beliefs about blacks and other historically disadvantaged groups.” These studies suggest that aversive racists will not discriminate in situations where the discrimination would be obvious, but that “because aversive racists do possess negative feelings, often unconsciously, discrimination occurs when bias is not obvious or can be rationalized on the basis of some factor other than race.”

Source: Melissa Hart, Subjective Decisionmaking and Unconscious Racism, 56 Ala. L. Rev. 741, 746-748. 2005.