Photo by Wesley Law
It starts when we mistrust, resent, or frankly hate a group of people we think of as very different from ourselves. Soon we’re getting scolded for remarks that we see as harmless or blamed for protests that we see as necessary. Authorities of various sorts announce guidelines, we all get touchy, and attitudes harden. The rules are reissued. Backlash erases them. Conscience rewrites them. Alan Lambert, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University, is an expert in the mental processes that shape—and perpetuate—racial bias. We asked him why it still exists.
Why is racism so insidious? Because we don’t realize how much prejudice and stereotyping are going on beneath the level of awareness. It’s unconscious, implicit bias. When people talk about consciousness-raising to become aware of unconscious prejudice, that’s an oxymoron, because if it’s really unconscious, we’re not aware of it. We’re not aware of the association our mind is making. But we can be aware of our behavior.
Is racism bred in the bone or carefully taught? Both. We feel more comfortable around people and ideas with which we’re familiar, and there are some genetic reasons to distrust “outgroups.” But it’s like aggression: People are hardwired, for biological reasons like survival, to be aggressive, but that doesn’t mean we have no control over our behavior and are doomed to be aggressive forever.
Is it preferable to have at least a veneer of civility, or dangerous to suppress racism because it will fester? In his campaign, [President Donald] Trump certainly fanned the flames of xenophobia. That has let people be more aware of such feelings and more open about expressing them. If you’re a target of prejudice, this loosening of constraints is obviously a threat. But I guess it’s “good” in the sense that we might have been fooling ourselves with the sense that all this was going away—and it’s not.
How closely tied are racism and economic uncertainty? When the economic picture gets more negative, that tends to be associated with more prejudice toward outgroups. You’re waiting in line for your job, and you see other people cutting in front of you, and you get angry. Some of the people who now fear becoming a minority are people who, for a long time, have had low status economically.
What role does social status play? Social dominance theory says that all cultures have a hierarchy, and when people are in power there are psychological reasons why they want to retain that power. It’s biological, too—even other species, once they group into a pack or clan and have power in a region, want to hold onto it.
Busing, affirmative action, P.C. language, mandatory workshops…so many efforts seem to backfire. People generally don’t like being forced to do something they don’t want to do. You want people to want to do this—to find it intrinsically worthwhile. So in the workplace, instead of framing it as “Some of you are bad people,” you tell them, “Our company is going to be more successful—i.e., more profitable—if people work together.”
In countries where racism is pervasive, researchers have found more deaths from heart disease—among both racists and their victims. Could health be another reward? I think there’s a grain of truth there. Cooperation is healthy. It’s less stressful. And happy people live longer.
