Our nation has a serious problem with race. Like a grotesque sleeping giant, it has been awakened by our current administration’s fueling of partisanship and xenophobia, the “us vs. them” rhetoric, QAnon conspiracy theories, social media disinformation, and Trump super-spreader rallies. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are nothing new to minorities, who have been the victims of racial profiling, violence, and discrimination for hundreds of years. When I see videos of white supremacists in camo, carrying automatic weapons and Confederate flags, their Trump hats, and “don’t tread on me” patches, I am absolutely disgusted and dumbfounded. Here we are in the 21st Century, and we are still faced with rampant racism.
So I ask the question, how do people become racist?
Well, we’re not born racist, it’s learned. In the past, there have been suggestions that racism is a “natural” fear inherent to our genetic ancestry, but this tenet has been proven to be false time and time again. There is no genetic precedent for determining race because race does not exist from a biological standpoint (1). So why does racism exist? Because children in this country are born into a world of systemic racism. They’re born into a culture that protects racist attitudes and ideologies, and those ideologies seep into every aspect of daily life. If a person has a racist attitude against minorities or LGBTQ people, it’s something that they have learned from their parents, families, schools, and the media. It’s part of that person’s culture.
According to May Ling Halim, associate professor of psychology at California State University, Long Beach, and Sarah Gaither, assistant professor psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, in order to combat racism, we need to looks at it’s origins, and to recognize the underlying psychological and functions that make us categorize people according color (2). So racism is learned, it’s part of our culture, and then there’s personal bias, and the larger bias known as institutional racism, which is embedded in our society. We see disparities based on race in social and political institutions, the criminal justice system, the educational system, and the health system.
Racism is one of the longest standing social issues that still persists in modern society and not just in the US. A lot of the tension that we see in multi-cultural societies today comes from our habit of separating people into different racial categories, we have learned to categorize people based on their skin color, how they dress, and what they look like. Much of US history is dominated by struggles with race and ethnicity, and ignoring and denying racism does more damage than not. Niki Haley blatantly lied at the GOP convention, by stating that “America is not a racist country,” I beg to differ (3).
Unfortunately, institutional racism is ingrained and automatically accepted, and if the American people want to enact true, long-lasting change, we need to have that uncomfortable talk about racism and bias. We need to start this conversation with our children and we need to talk about it in the classroom. No matter what our personal biases may be, racism is wrong, and things won’t change until we acknowledge it and start talking about it. Studies have suggested that a lot of white parents take “colorblind” approaches when it comes to race (2), they squirm and change the subject, or avoid it altogether. This doesn’t help children when they interact with someone of a different color or different cultural background. By avoiding the discussion of race at home and in the classroom, we are handicapping children because they won’t know how to relate to people with different skin colors, they won’t have the tools to connect with these individuals, and they’ll be cheated out of the empathy needed to relate to others different from them. We need to talk about race, and we should acknowledge the historical aspects of racism in our country, that Americans come from a wide variety of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and that certain groups have been chronically oppressed.
I’ve been lucky enough to have traveled, and to have made friends of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. As a result, I’ve learned that we all want the same things, happiness, friends, and family, etc. We’re more the same than different. But not everyone can travel, but, everyone in this nation can reach out to people of different ethnic groups. If we’re going to combat racism in this country, we need to start at home, and we need to move out of our comfort zones and interact with people of different races and ethnicities. Research has shown that the racial makeup of a parent’s friend network is a big influence on the types of racial attitudes that children develop. Children growing up in families who relate only to a racially homogeneous set of friends, like all white friends, tend to be less likely to have a more objective, and empathetic view about race later on in life (4).
Parents, families, friends and teachers can play a crucial role in helping children talk openly about the historical roots of racism in our country. At home, we can talk about police brutality, slavery, ethnic stereotypes and most of all, white privilege. These conversations might take a lot of practice, research, and patience, it might be difficult, but can be a good start to dismantling racism. We should be open and honest, and listen to each other, and we need to acknowledge racism before we can combat it.
Our country is in the midst of a constitutional and cultural crisis. Trump has drawn upon the inherent racism and separatism in our society to fan the flames of nationalism in an effort to secure power. Authoritarians and dictators play on the fear and anxiety of the populous, the fear that blacks will burn down white suburban neighborhoods, and bus loads of Mexicans will cross the border in droves to sell drugs and murder us in our beds. Racism is our weak spot, and if we as a nation are going to overcome it, we need to start at home, in our kitchens, neighborhoods, and in our communities.
Sources:
1. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/health/kids-raised-with-bias-wellness/index.html
4. https://news.yale.edu/2020/06/15/its-never-too-early-talk-children-about-race
5. https://www.anxiety.org/psychology-of-dictators-power-fear-anxiety