Why Whites Can't See

By most accounts, Trayvon Martin was no saint. In the past 18 months we’ve learned he got into more than a few brawls during his brief lifetime. Trial coverage revealed he had THC – the chemical compound found in marijuana – in his system when he died.

Martin wasn’t a graduating merit scholar or high achieving student headed toward a career in biophysics that was cut down before he could join the ranks of the American professional class. If his parents’ public pleas for justice are an indication, he probably didn’t speak English with the preferred neutral voice – devoid of any accent or tell-tale twang associated with "Black English."

Therefore, Martin wasn’t – by some White societal standards – typical. He was, through many White lenses, stereotypical. He embodied the well-known caricature of a young Black “buck”: wild-eyed, unpredictable, opportunistic, prone to random violence and theft, sneaky and lawless. In the eyes of some, he held a social and moral status that wasn’t much higher than that of vermin. So, for some people in this country, he justifiably earned his death sentence. And, the rest of us – especially our men and boys -- bear yet another burden by association.

So, it didn’t matter that 17 year-old Martin was walking home through his father’s neighborhood, unarmed and with a pocket full of ice tea and skittles. It didn’t matter that George Zimmerman, an armed volunteer neighborhood watchman, approached the teen after local police told him not to. What mattered is that, in the eyes of a portion of our nation, he was guilty – like so many of us are – of being a stereotype.

Prejudice is a human trait?

Minorities in America, Europe and Latin America have pleaded with the White majority to see something so obvious to everybody but them. Something embedded within their culture or nature, perhaps, triggers a thalamic response against all others that don’t look like them.

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Just about every other race, culture and ethnicity in this world has been a victim of this unnamed and unidentified trait. Nazi Germany revealed how destructive that trait is if unchecked, unmonitored and unbalanced. Because of it, some non-White peoples – such as some Native American tribes – have been decimated to near extinction.

It’s not that just about all cultures haven’t historically demonstrated genocide, racial and ethnic bias and exclusion. Many Asian cultures are notorious for it. And, despite Arab Muslim arguments against prevailing racism in the West, they have a long history of enslaving Black Africans. African-Americans have been particularly brazen in their backlash against White people in recent years, although we tend to justify it as anger for years of oppression and exclusion. In my opinion, such blind rage leads to killing a canary with a cannon, thus unnecessarily wounding the innocent.

"Young Lady With Reflection" by adamr

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Two years ago, Belgian researchers, Arne Roets and Alain Van Heil, concluded that prejudice results from a human psychological need to simplify an overwhelmingly complicated world.  According to the Psychological Science. org press release, “People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity.”

So, I’m not arguing that racial bias is an exclusively European trait. Many studies have proven that people gravitate toward their own cultural or social groups. Seems we humans like to see ourselves reflected in others' faces.

While I take issue with that way of thinking, I can understand and accept the premise. But when bias goes one step further and devalues people’s lives – thus justifying killing them on the basis of their difference -- then that’s something else entirely.

My question is, where does it come from?

No empathy for dark skin

While researchers around the world have studied the perplexing issue of race and racism for decades, two social neuroscientists at the University of Toronto unveiled something I find a bit disturbing. In a study of White participants, they discovered a difference in brain activity when observing people of different races, Science Daily reported in 2010.

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While hooked up to EEG (electroencephalogram) monitors, participants watched videos wherein men of a variety of races – White, Black, South Asian and East Asian – simply sipped a glass of water. The article reports that most people – when observing someone else doing the same task – experience the same involuntary muscle movements as if they are doing it, too. It’s an indication of the motor cortex, the part of the brain that coordinates visual and motor function.  We humans are wired to respond empathetically to someone else’s movement at a subconscious level.

But, when participants observed minorities doing the same task, their brains barely fired an empathetic muscular reaction whereas they fired normally when watching someone of their own race.

According to researcher Jennifer Gutsell: “Previous research shows people are less likely to feel connected to people outside their own ethnic groups, and we wanted to know why. What we found is that there is a basic difference in the way peoples' brains react to those from other ethnic backgrounds. Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less motor-cortex activity than observing a person of one's own race. In other words, people were less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people."

The response revealed a lack of human connection and empathy for people of other races at a neurological level.  Science Daily reported that researchers pre-tested participants for subtle racism and those who scored high showed even more pronounced disassociation.

"The so-called mirror-neuron-system is thought to be an important building block for empathy by allowing people to 'mirror' other people's actions and emotions; our research indicates that this basic building block is less reactive to people who belong to a different race than you," Science Daily quoted  research team member, Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht.

Hope lies in connection

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Researchers of social psychology and race have all discovered one simple fact: when people have first-hand positive experiences with someone of a different race, they tend to see them as a part of their group. They no longer associate them as the “other.” All of us who dearly love our non-Black family and friends know that phenomenon well. It’s a strange thing. Our friends become our family when we see them from the heart. The superficial dividing differences seem to disappear. We just don’t make those connections often enough. Maybe it’s time to come out our comfort zone, resist the familiar and offer friendships with others unlike ourselves for our own sakes as well as theirs.

So, while science has proven prejudice exists on a neurological level, it has also revealed circumstances when there’s an absence of prejudice. It’s no mystery. We humans are proven capable of judging and treating each other as Martin Luther King predicted: “not by the color of our skins but by the content of our characters.” All our lives depend on it.

Sources:

“Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking,” Association for Psychological Science.  http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/research-states-that-prejudice-comes-from-a-basic-human-need-and-way-of-thinking.html

“Human Brain Recognizes and Reacts to Race,” Science Daily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100426113108.htm

https://ose.utsc.utoronto.ca/ose/story.php?id=2135