Racism - How does it happen and what can we do against it?
“I can’t breathe” - A black man is being held down aggressively and choked to death by a police officer. He is begging, calling out for his mother, telling the officer: “I can’t breathe”, over and over “I can’t breathe.”
The incident was filmed. I am sure, everyone reading this has already seen, at least parts of the video. It was a wake up call, a call to protests and riots, a call to a revolution in many countries, people mourning the death of George Floyd.
Sadly this is not a one in a lifetime thing. That act resulted from deeply ingrained racism, that is not only present in America, but almost all over the world. A stigma held up against people of colour. The question is, why is this the case?
It all starts with the human principle of saving cognitive resources. To make thinking easier, we like to put everything into groups, we like to think in boxes, it’s convenient and less complex for the mind. We see a fork, a spoon, a knife, and think: “cutlery”. We look at trees, flowers and grass and think: “plants”. It is human to group things. But we don’t only group the world around us, we even group ourselves.
So this is what happens: when people see a common trait, they group everyone who has that trait together. This means, a white person will see themself in the group of “white people” and a back person will see themself in the group of “black people”. But not only do we group ourselves, we also we deem these groups our “Social identity”, it is part of our self-concept. In our mind we have now created ingroups and outgroups. We are part of the ingroup, the people different from us, are part of the outgroup.
Creating groups in itself is not problematic yet, what starts to be problematic, is a favorization of the ingroup, which, if there is an identification with the ingroup, will come naturally.
An experiment was conducted, where college-students were asked a few questions, and were then grouped in “People who prefer Klee-Paintings” and “People who prefer Kandinsky-Paintings”. These are called “Minimal-groups”, they are purely cognitive. The ingroup members didn’t know each other, neither did they know the members of the outgroup. Still, the people preferred their own group. The students were given a task, where they had to choose how they would distribute certain amounts of money, to members of the ingroup and members of the outgroup. The students didn’t only favorize their own group, when it came to money distribution, they even chose the distribution, so that the difference between the amounts would be the biggest. For example: if they had the choice to give the ingroup 10$ and the outgroup 10$ or to give the ingroup 8$ and the outgroup 4$, they would have chosen the latter.
This happens in our daily lives as well, whether consciously or subconsciously, we prefer our ingroup, the one we identify ourselves the most with.
If a strong identification with the ingroup is given, motivational driven group comparisons start. People want the Ingroup to be superior, to raise their own self-esteem. If the comparison seems insufficient, the ingroup doesn’t live up the the standards there are a few possibilities on what an ingroup member could do:
First, they could leave their group.
Second, they could compete with the outgroup.
Third, they could change the comparison factor or change the outgroup they are comparing the ingroup with.
Or fourth, the worst scenario, they could actively hurt and put the outgroup down. During these comparisons, the individual identity of a person loses its importance and a groups prototype becomes more and more salient.
And during the comparison prejudice can be used to benefit the ingroup. Stereotypes are activated, and different types of discrimination are prevalent.
One type would be the creation of symbolic equality, which means giving a sense of equality while the outgroup is still neglected and ripped off some opportunities. Another would be reversed discrimination, by treating the outgroup a little better than the ingroup to keep a good image. And the last way would be blatant racial discrimination, just hate and neglect, basically what is happening between the police and black people in america.
A simulation study showed that police officers, no matter their gender or skin color tended to shoot at black people more often, even if they portrayed the same behavior as white people.
This implicates, that not only in- and outgroup comparisons are the problem, but maybe also personality traits.
Patriotism is a very strong trait found in America, and right winged autoriatism is predominant. Many people hold strongly onto social convention and subject to the states authorities. These people are generally more prone for prejudice against anything that is different.
Another trait would be the social-dominance-orientation, there is a wish for group hierarchy. People with this way of thinking want their group to have a fixed position in the organization of society, they look down on “lower status” or “concurrence” groups. An example statement for concurrence would be “The immigrants are stealing our jobs”, an example for Lower-class-thinking would be the grouping of all people of color as “thugs”. Now what is important to note, is that even with these traits, the prejudice itself comes from norms and social context - it is learned rather than a natural cognitive occurrence.
The question that still stands is: How can we lose these prejudices?
One way would be Individualisation. The way people look at “black” and “white” as homogenous masses makes them more prone for stereotypes and prejudice. Rather focus on individuals, humanize the masses by humanizing single members. This is why the video of George Floyd created such an uproar. By seeing his face, hearing his voice, witnessing his struggle, many people found themselves empathizing and humanizing with a victim of police brutality, rather than just mindlessly hearing a name or reading an article. When people put themselves in the shoes of someone else the social prototypes are less salient.
Another way to combat prejudice would be recategorization. Rather than looking at “black” and “white” One could start looking at “Doctors” or “Teachers” or “Electricians” or “Architects” - regrouping can help invalidating stereotypes.
The most important thing one could do is communicate. Open communication with outgroup members can lead to individualization and understanding. Finding common goals, the realization of being the same status and of no intended concurrence can lead to a creation of a new “we”, instead of “us” and “them”. People in high positions, authorities need to actively show that the groups are not too different and that the members are able to easily communicate.
A more straightforward way of fixing prejudicial thoughts, if individuals find themselves struggling with them, is the “Just say no”- principle. Some prejudicial thoughts come unprepared, instinctively. It is important to realize them and internally say “no”. On the other hand, when you find yourself surprised at something, at a broken stereotype, internally say “yes”. An experiment shows, that participants who followed these instructions for a few weeks showed less instinctive stereotyping.
In the end I want to talk about why I chose the phrase “Eat the racists” instead of something else (Stop the racists, fuck the racists, you name it). It is because I solemnly believe that people's attitude can be changed. I remember playing the game “snake” on my old nokia phone. It was about a small snake that had to eat the dots on the screen, and with every dot, it grew bigger. This is what I am picturing when I say “Eat the racists”. Eat them, and let them become part of our snake. I hope that makes sense? If it doesn’t, I’m sorry. I still hope you found this little essay informative (even though there are so many more things one could say about this topic - and trust me, it burned me to not write more, but this text is far too long already). And I want to thank you for reading all of this. I hope together we can make the world a little more inclusive.
