In article"Cognitive costs of exposure to racial prejudice"by Salvatore&Shelton Provide brief summary of prior research given in intro.provide...

In signal detection terms, the threshold at which members
of traditionally advantaged groups make attributions to prejudice may be relatively high
(cf. Barrett & Swim, 1998), both because these individuals do not encounter bias
very often and because the
implications of prejudice are limited for them
(Schmitt &
Branscombe, 2002). These findings suggest that Whites
are
relatively insensitive to subtle cues of prejudice, regardless
of
the race that is targeted. Thus, we predicted that they would
not
experience cognitive disruption after exposure to
ambiguous
prejudice. Rather, we expected that Whites, in contrast
to
Blacks, would experience substantial disruption when exposed
to
blatant prejudice.

Disadvantaged groups have a low
threshold when detecting instances of prejudice, similar to the 'cocktail party
phenomenon, when we can detect our own names in a hubub of noise (See Cherry 19??). This
constant 'signal detection' in social environments for the disadvantaged groups must be
cognitivly costly. As the instances of prejudice for whites(sic) are rare, the cognitive
demand in social environments will be less.

Thus, when
ambiguous instances of prejudice occour non whites will tune in while it will not affect
whites.  When racism is blatent, whites will experience substansial cognitive disruption
and underperform on a cognitive task
(Stroop).

Silverstrummer