We Might Be More Racist Than We Think We Are

[marmar]

via AlterNet:




Beacon Press / By Susan T. Fiske

We Might Be More Racist Than We Think We Are
The good news is that our prejudices are not inevitable -- we can fight them with broad social efforts to challenge stereotypes and by working together across group lines.

November 17, 2010 |


Reprinted from Are We Born Racist: New Insights from Neuroscience and Positive Psychology, edited by Jason Marsh, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Jeremy Adam Smith. Copyright (c) 2010. Excerpted with permission from Beacon Press, www.beacon.org.

How prejudiced are you?

Most people think they’re less biased than average. But just as we can’t all be better than average, we can’t all be less prejudiced than average. Although the success of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign suggests an America that is moving past traditional racial divisions and prejudices, it’s probably safe to assume that all of us harbor more biases than we think.

Science suggests that most of us don’t even know the half of it. A twenty-year eruption of research from the field of social neuroscience reveals exactly how automatically and unconsciously prejudice operates. As members of a society with egalitarian ideals, most Americans have good intentions. But new research suggests our brains and our impulses all too often betray us. That’s the bad news.

But here’s the good news: more recent research shows that our prejudices are not inevitable; they are actually quite malleable, shaped by an ever-changing mix of cultural beliefs and social circumstances. While we may be hardwired to harbor prejudices against those who seem different or unfamiliar to us, it’s possible to override our worst impulses and reduce these prejudices. Doing so requires more than just individual good intentions; it requires broad social efforts to challenge stereotypes and get people to work together across group lines. But a vital first step is learning about the biological and psychological roots of prejudice.

Modern prejudice

Here’s the first thing to understand: modern prejudice is not your grandparents’ prejudice. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/148871/we_might_be_more_racist_than_we_think_we_are/

[canoeist52]

1. Excerpt...

Explains team politics...



"In one of the most famous of these studies, pioneering social psychologist Henri Tajfel showed teenage boys paintings by Klee and Kandinsky and asked them which artist they preferred. Tajfel then gave the boys the chance to distribute money to others who preferred the same artist, or to those who liked the other artist. The Klee boys were significantly more likely to give money to other Klee fans; Kandinsky boys were significantly more likely to share with other Kandinsky-ites. They proved decidedly loyal to their groups, even though they’d become affiliated with this group just minutes earlier, knew nothing else about their fellow group members, and ostensibly had nothing to gain from their group membership.

Similar studies have shown that people demonstrate strong preferences toward those wearing the soccer jersey of a team they like, people who share their birthday, and people who subtly resemble themselves, not to mention those of their own race or ethnicity. Conditioned by millennia of tribal warfare and fierce competition for limited resources, we are always looking for cues to help us make snap judgments about others."

[Igel]

2. We're primates.

It explains lots of stuff, but isn't really a new explanation.

We focus on skin color because it was perceived to be a social problem by a particular group. In all-white societies they focused on class, because it was perceived to be a social problem by a particular group. In other societies they focus on ethnicity, religion (if ethnicity =/= religion), territory, language/dialect, dress, or something else.

But because we've defined only some kinds of discrimination as problematic, we ignore the other kinds--even though we all tend to be just about average.

We're primates. We like our immediate social groups to be small but interlinked with larger groups. We want to belong to a group, and define them by opposition to outsiders as much or more than by allegiance to a common cause or person: One is the same as the other, but finding common enemies is easier than finding common goals. We try to excuse and justify those in our group because we need our group; we try to condemn and make the crimes of those outside our group even worse because we need our group to be distinct and superior. The worst of my tribe is better than the best of your tribe.

And as soon as we form groups, we stop reasoning, to a large extent, with the other side. We revise history to justify our current views. We generalize and overlook their good points and our bad points because to acknowledge our bad points or their good points is to weaken the boundaries between us. The blacker the black and whiter the white the easier the boundaries are to spot.

The less empowered group members, the more at the fringes of the group, the more vicious, on average. Those who are completely at home in their group and respected are generally less hateful; they do what they do usually not out of hate but out of self-interest because they have nothing to prove--at worst, they manipulate those less powerful in their group to help maintain or increase their authority. Those on the fringe need to make sure that the boundary is clearly drawn to include them in the group, however, and that leads to more friction with outsiders.

We're primates. It's what we evolved to do. We can suppress the symptoms on particular problem issues; but we still do it, and sometimes make whether or not we suppress the symptoms of a particular problem a matter of tribal allegiance in order to make those who aren't as righteous and perfect seem neandertal and inferior, haters and discriminatory, and therefore worthy of our contempt and hatred and consequently meriting being discriminated against. Funny how that works.

[Duncan Grant]

3. Worth the read -- and a great way to examine contemporary politics, too. knr (nt)

:kick:

[struggle4progress]

4. You've Got To Be Carefully Taught

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAM0DuXF6I8