Researchers define racism behaviorally as consistently more negative responses to black-associated objects

Evidence

To avoid artificially narrowing the search for the most politically potent form of contemporary racism, we employ this second, more general definition. This describes a category-based affective response to attitude objects that have to do with race, in which racism is inferred if an individual responds systematically more negatively to attitude objects associated with blacks than to other comparable attitude objects (just as anti-Semitism is inferred when attitude objects associated with Jews are responded to especially negatively). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3604

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the operational definition of contemporary racism as a measurable category-based affective response rather than a belief in biological superiority.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘Implicit Bias’ literature and measures like the IAT that infer bias from differential response times to attitude objects.