To solve a problem it is fundamental to understand the roots of the impairment. With racism, there are many roots. Pretend racism is like a broken car and there is no given reason the vehicle is working. You take it to a mechanic and they identify that the car starter needs to be replaced and that the “tranny” is faulty. In order to start the car the car starter needs to be fixed. In order for the car to shift, the tranny needs to be either replaced or touched up.
It is odd to compare racism to a broken car. Though, the problems are similar in that to fix both, identifying what is broken is key in looking to the solution. A second point of comparison is that it takes a degree of expertise in a particular field to solve the problem. A sociologist who has never touched a vehicle wouldn’t necessarily offer great advice on how to replace a tranny or even change the oil. A mechanic who has never studied sociology or social problems wouldn’t offer great advice on how to solve a complex social issue like racism without having first studied how people function.
By drawing on the concepts and research in psychology and sociology, the causes of racism become apparent. These concepts and studies first reveal how racism works and are supplemented by short anecdotes to provide specific examples for abstract theories and applications of research.
John Watson was considered a radical behaviorist. This meant that he rejected the notions that our behaviors were determined by our genetics and were more heavily influenced by our environments. John Watson is a classical example of someone who favors nurture over nature in the explanation of who people grow up to be. He is very famous for his controversial and possibly unethical research on “Little Albert”. This study is frequently cited in introductory psychology classes in teaching the school of behaviorism. If this doesn’t make sense now, don’t worry, there are some examples coming later.
Watson took a young baby boy, known as little Albert, and introduced various stimuli. The baby, shown wearing a light colored jumper, reacts with no fear when around a large dog, a tiny monkey, a burning newspaper, and a white rat. The baby remains content. Loud indescribable noises are introduced with the white rat and Little Albert reacts with crying as he is afraid of the loud clank behind him. Watson repeats the noise along with the presence of a harmless furry rat, which Albert wasn’t afraid of at first, several times.
After this goes on, Little Albert begins to fear, not just the sound, but the rat and even other furry animals like bunny rabbits. Even when the clanking sound is removed, Little Albert still begins to cry when presented with furry animals. Watson concluded from this study that fears are learned behaviors and not inherited by genes in our infancy. It is great evidence that fear is a social behavior that is learned.
A grandmother who was raised in the 50s when racism and blatant discrimination was prevalent is likely to still show signs of racism. She likely learned a fear of people of different races from her own upbringing.
She is taking care of her grandchildren when she decides to bring them grocery shopping. The grandchildren are allowed to roam to the edges of her peripherals; until she spots a black man shopping. She tenses up, tightens her purse to her side, and hurries down the aisle hollering at her grandkids to get by her side. “What’s wrong?” the children ask. “I don’t trust that man over there.” The kids look over in the direction her eyes point and are already frightened by grandma’s actions. They stay close by.
Occasions like this happen hundreds of times over the course of years and like Little Albert, racism becomes conditioned just as Albert was conditioned to fear fuzzy animals. This is one form of racism which is frequently noted as micro-aggression. At its core, it is conditioning that is learned and is not innate.
A second problem in racism is a two concept problem. The first is how schemata guide us in interactions with other people and objects. The second is when these schemata assume things that aren’t always true and that particular actions associated with schemata become forced into social fact. The example that will be described below is in regards to learned helplessness.
Let’s get some definitions out of the way. First, what is a schema? A schema is a set of related ideas that help guide us in interacting with a particular object or person. For example, an egg schema may include scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs, sunny side up eggs with toast, eggs in an bird nest, or it may even remind you of farming. The key here is that an adult human has a strong ability to know what to do with an egg in the fridge and an egg in the Robin’s nest outside. A kid, who hasn’t learned that an egg in a nest is any different than an egg in the fridge, will likely want to cook the birds egg if they happen upon one. The key is, kids learn sooner or later there is a difference and they interact differently with that object.
Another short example is how a human interacts with a couch. There are a number a ways people learn that a couch is meant for laying, sitting, and frequently tied to munching on popcorn and watching movies. A kid may get yelled at for standing on a couch, a kid may fall off a couch and get hurt and not stand on a couch, or a kid may mimic their parents who always sit on couches. Ideas on how to interact with a couch are learned. Just as how we interact with hundreds of thousands of other items.
Now, a person is clearly not an item. Yet, because humans pick up on differences, and create a cognitive edifice such as the schemata to interact with them, they interact with people differently based on a number of factors. Relationship to them, race, age, height, size, weight, ethnicity, ability, job description, etc. Just like someone learns to sit on a couch, people learn how to be racist based on their past experiences, even though these past experience don’t apply to everyone.
Let’s take a classroom setting for example. A teacher has a class mainly of white students. There happens to be a person who has brown skin. Not only has the teacher been raised to have a fear of black people, he has also had one other student who was a particularly lazy student and he hears from his other teachers that black students tend to be lazy. He remembers that his last student who was black rose his hand only when needing to use the bathroom.
Two students raise their hand, one is black, one is white, the teacher answers the white kids question first. It’s a particularly long answer. The black student puts their hand down. The teacher doesn’t call on the student.
Second scenario. Same classroom. The students are suppose to be working on homework. Four students are chatting. Two white, a white one and a black one. The black one gets told to be quiet and the rest of the class quiets down in response to the teacher cracking down on chatting. The class gets loud again and the black student is told to be quiet a second time. The class quiets down again. Third time, black student gets kicked out.
Wait, this student has been compared to white peers his whole life. One teacher in middle school even told him he was lazy. This student starts raising his hand less because he is never called on. This student begins to realize their difference. Then, we get into the last concept of learned helplessness.
Learned helplessness is a concept that psychologist Martin Seligman came up with when studying dogs. The experiment goes like this. A dog gets placed in a two sided cage with a movable barrier in between. One side of the cage is set up to give a painful but harmless electric shock to the dog. When the dog is placed in the electric half of the cage and the barrier is not in place, it jumps over to the non-electric side of the cage. Reasonable to move from the electric shock side of the cage when feeling pain right? However, when the barrier is placed up and the dog is shocked multiple times, after the barrier moves, the dog becomes statistically less likely to jump the barrier unless coaxed with treats to come to the other side. The dog, has, in Seligman’s mind, has learned to become helpless and not change its situation when it feels their will be a barrier. The dog rides out the shock.
Though learned helplessness is applied to understanding the development and treatment of depression, this is what racism results in when in the classroom up above. Some students, will become helpless in the classroom because there is a belief held by teachers and students that black students are lazy and don’t contribute to the class. This belief is the result of a repetitive and complex cognitive process that has been beaten into us for years.
Returning to our car example, for years the pipes of the vehicle have turned cruddy and haven’t been changed. The United States has been living in a fantasy land where they can get away with saying, “I’m not racist, but the neighbors are black and moved in with two rottweilers and I think they are smoking weed.” Or, “I’m not racist but, I don’t like black people music.” when they mean to say, I don’t like rap. Because believe it or not, black guys can sing more than rap and also have the ability to play classical piano. Plus, does it mean anything to say, “I don’t like white people music?”
The first step to solving racism is admitting to the fact that racism is learned and is still present. Many people are taught to be racist by our upbringing. It’s not that the way in which we learn should be shamed, it is that the results of our learning are detrimental to other people. The United States still is racist. The first step is, so to speak, admitting racism is a problem and individual actions should be monitored.
The second step is to actively engage in schema change, and challenge other people to change their schemata in regards to race too. Schema change is simple, start talking to people who come from different backgrounds. In doing so, the realization that not every person who is black fits the stereotype. When someone says, I’m not racist but . . . challenge them to admit that they have been raised in a racist environment and that perhaps, racism has rubbed off on them and they need to engage in learning more. Ask them what they mean by black music. Ask them what they mean when they say I’m not racist but.
Third step, stand up on a couch for fifteen minutes. If a person can stand up on a couch for fifteen minutes, they have successfully rejected the idea that couches are only for sitting and laying. Because, you can stand on a couch for fifteen minutes. If you can do that, you also learned that not all black people sing rap. And if you can learn that, and engage in conversation about race, you can begin to reduce racism in the United States. That’s just a start.
Supplementary Readings
Symbolic Interactionism
What is Behaviorism
Definition of The Situation
