In my chapter, I explored four major themes in prejudice research that are also a central feature of the Twilight series. Below is an excerpt from my essay discussing one of these themes:

When we think of prejudice, blatant examples of discrimination typically come to mind (e.g., slavery, school segregation, women prohibited from voting). Thankfully, such explicit demonstrations are largely behind America. But that does not mean prejudice is extinct. Instead, prejudice has simply gone underground.

Modern prejudice tends to be more camouflaged and subtle. For example, a newspaper covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina printed a photo of two white survivors wading in the water, dragging food from a grocery store. The photo caption described the couple as "finding" the food. Conversely, that same newspaper also printed a photo of a young black man dragging groceries through the water, and that caption described him as "looting" the store. This subtle difference in language implies an underlying stereotype that black men are criminals.

Because modern prejudice is less obvious, it tends to work its magic on us from behind the scenes. This unconscious prejudice influences us in ways that are outside our conscious awareness, a concept psychologists refer to as "implicit prejudice." While we may intend to be fair and treat everyone equally, underneath our awareness, our minds automatically make connections and apply stereotypes to those around us. For example, researcher Keith Payne demonstrated that people automatically associate Black men with weapons. This association is so strong that in studies where people are subliminally primed with Black male faces (meaning when they are shown the face so quickly they do not consciously realize what they saw), they are more likely to mistake a benign tool, like a wrench, for a handgun.

Another commonly studied automatic association is that white is good and black is bad. For example, in old Western movies and TV shows, we could easily distinguish the good guys from the bad guys by the color of their cowboy hats: good guys wore white hats (e.g., Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger) and bad guys wore black. Similarly, many of our fairy tales contain the stereotypic image of the "white knight" or prince charming riding up on a white horse (or Richard Gere riding up in a white limousine at the end of Pretty Woman).

Researchers who recently examined this association confirmed that most Americans do automatically associate white with goodness and virtue and black with badness and sin. In an experiment testing this idea, Gerald Clore and colleagues presented people with a series of words and asked them to quickly identify if the word was positive (e.g., gentle) or negative (e.g., sloppy). Some words were presented in white lettering, while others were presented in black lettering. The researchers found that people were much quicker at labeling positive words when they were presented in white lettering and labeling negative words when they were presented in black lettering. However, when the lettering color was switched (e.g., negative words with white lettering), they took much longer to respond. Because we tend to assume that "white equals good," it is harder for us to label a negative word as bad when it is written in a "good" color. This also explains why we refer to a harmless lie as "white lie" or dangerous magic as "black magic."

Why do we imbue certain colors with moral meaning? Some believe this association stems from a fundamental fear of the unknown. White is associated with the day, whereas black is associated with the night. During the day, we can easily see what the world looks like around us, but when it is night and the world is covered in blackness, we never know what lurks in the shadows. So white is comforting and predictable, but black is mysterious, frightening, and dangerous.

Others instead believe this association stems from a fundamental and ancient fear of dirt and contagion that has been deeply wired into our human brains. Think of the commonly used phrase "pure as new fallen snow." Not only is freshly fallen snow pure and untouched, it is also white. White is often used to convey cleanliness (e.g., a doctor's white coat) and virtue (e.g., in Western cultures, wedding dresses are traditionally white). So not only is white a color, it is a metaphor for purity.

How does this link between colors and morality relate to the topic of prejudice? It is easy to see how this strongly held assumption that white is good and black is bad might translate into an assumption about skin color. Someone who holds such stereotypes about white and black colors may also be likely to believe that white skinned people are beautiful and pure, and that dark skinned people are ugly and dangerous. Such beliefs hark back to a day when America had a "one-drop rule" regarding racial definitions-even one drop of African blood was enough to label an individual as Black. The reasoning was that one drop of Black blood was enough to "taint" an otherwise "pure" White lineage.

And it is not just white individuals who hold this belief that light skin is preferable to dark skin. A number of scholars have discussed the skin color bias that exists within African-American culture. In a well-known study conducted by Clark and Clark in the 1940s, young black girls given a choice between playing with a white doll or a black doll typically chose the white doll. These girls also described the color white as "good" and "pretty" and described the color black as "bad" and "ugly." And it doesn't look like things have improved much since this study was conducted. Despite the "Black is Beautiful" cultural movement that started in the 1960s, a recent replication of the Clark study in 2006 produced nearly identical results to the original.

Because African Americans are raised in a society full of biases and stereotypes, they are often just as likely as Caucasians to internalize such beliefs and discriminate against those who have darker skin. In the Clark and Clark study, when the young black girls were asked to fill in a human outline with the color of their own skin, they often chose a lighter shade color than was accurate, suggesting an implicit desire that their skin be lighter. And evidence of this desire to have lighter skin can also be seen in other countries. For instance, women from Asia, Africa, and Latin America often go to great lengths to lighten their skin, using harmful chemicals and bleaching products in their quest for beauty and acceptance.

So how does this "white equals good" theme relate to Twilight? Well, in most tales, vampires are associated with black and darkness, depicted as "creatures of the night" that skulk in the shadows and dress in black from head to toe. What makes Stephenie Meyer's take on the vampire so unique is that she instead associates the vampire with white and light.