A thread came up recently about how Americans were so easy to buy into the "minorities game the welfare system" or something of that ilk, and some were so amazed at how American's bought into the propaganda. A friendly reminder that white people think black people are supernatural, or "would be supernatural" if anyone could be.
So yeah, folks should never be surprised at the "---- While Black" instances, or anything else. It's ingrained in some people's subconscious that black folk MAY BE magical on some level...
Waytz says the superhuman bias may result in part from "long-held stereotypes about toughness, aggression, physicality, and sexuality." Whites see blacks as athletic and aggressive, and so it's easier to picture them running as fast as a jet or picking up a tank.
Matthew Hughey, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, notes that at the turn of the 20th century blacks began succeeding at popular sports, and "commentators began to emphasize white cognitive superiority in contrast to the supposedly savage and unbridled physical superiority of blacks. Accordingly, a popular culture narrative of 'black brawn' versus 'white brains' emerged."
Pain tolerance would go along with that narrative, based on what Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner called moral typecasting. In any instance of intentional helping and hurting, we perceive an agent and a patient, a doer and a doee. They found that the more you cast someone as an active doer, the less you see the person as susceptible to things being done. Villains and heroes such as Hitler and the Dalai Lama, for instance, were considered relatively impervious to pain. Fitting this explanation, Waytz and colleagues found that the more people "superhumanized" blacks, the less pain sensitivity they attributed to them.
So yeah, folks should never be surprised at the "---- While Black" instances, or anything else. It's ingrained in some people's subconscious that black folk MAY BE magical on some level...