[Peace-discuss] Racism is not inevitable

[patton paul]

Even some anti-racists tend to assume that racism is deep seated
in the human psyche.  This article describes a simple experiment which
provides evidence against this view.  It suggests that racism
is purely a learned behavior rather than an innate predisposition.  The
URL for the full published result is given.
-Paul P.


LEONARD PITTS JR.: Humans are not hardwired for racism

December 21, 2001

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

For my money, it's one of the more depressing things people do.

When they talk about racism people shrug. Sometimes in words, sometimes in
the actual gesture. Either way, it bespeaks a presumption that racism is
inevitable. That, regrettable as it may be, we are naturally inclined to
judge people based on skin color.

But maybe we are not.

That's the quietly revolutionary implication of a new study from the
University of California at Santa Barbara, recently published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. You can find information
on the study and a link to it online at www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep.

Here's how it worked: Test subjects were shown images on a computer screen
of two racially integrated basketball teams whose members had ostensibly
been involved in an altercation. Each picture was accompanied by
statements from the team members -- two black, two white on each team --
talking about the supposed confrontation. Later, test subjects were given
the pictures and the statements and told to match the speakers with their
words from memory.

Researchers expected their subjects to make mistakes; in fact, they were
counting on it. As one of the researchers, Leda Cosmides, puts it,
"Mistakes reveal encoding: People more readily confuse individuals whom
they have encoded as members of the same category than those whom they
have categorized as members of different categories."

Indeed, when test subjects were shown pictures of black and white players
wearing similar jerseys, they tended to mix them up by race -- to assign
one black player's words to another, even though they might have been on
different teams. However, when players wore distinctive jerseys -- when
their team affiliations were visibly emphasized, in other words -- the
mix-ups tended to be among teammates. Players on the same squad were
mistakenly assigned one another's words without regard to skin color.
Shortcut for a lazy mind

As Cosmides points out, scientists have long known that division leads
inevitably to discrimination. "If you divide people into two groups along
any dimension -- it can be a completely silly dimension -- they will start
favoring the in-group and discriminating against the out-group." So if it
turned out that people are hardwired to see those of different races as
"the other," as part of the opposing team, it would suggest that ending
racism is all but impossible.

This study indicates just the opposite. And it's worth remembering that,
for all the mighty machinery that maintains it, racism is, at its heart,
just a shortcut taken by a lazy mind. Just a way of claiming to know
another person without the bother of ever actually meeting him or her.
Behavior can be unlearned

I hesitate to read too much into a single study, but the paper Cosmides
and her colleagues have published is intriguing. You have to give it that
much. First, because it serves as a reminder that skin color doesn't
always tell you what team a person plays for. And second, because it
suggests that, for all our excuse-making to the contrary, there's nothing
inevitable about racism. Rather, racism is learned behavior.

And that's very good news. Because if you can learn how to do a thing, you
can also learn how to stop.