ELEMENTS OF RACISM
Why are we prejudiced? What happens in our brains when we make assumptions about people who look or speak differently to us? If we are to overcome our biases, we need to understand their neural and psychological roots.
If I want to do something to another human being that is something I don't typically like doing to human beings, then I'm going to need to not think about their mind while I do it. Take homeless people for instance, if you have to feel empathic towards every single person you see living on the streets, you could be exhausted before you get home. Or you might feel worried about them and guilty that you didn't help. We have demonstrated that the brain regions that are always engaged when you think about other people aren't engaged when you think about a person who doesn't share the same race with you.
The reason why we are prejudiced and I like to say that we are all prejudiced is because we live in cultures where certain things get associated. For instance, if you constantly see Africans committing violent criminal acts in the media, your brain associates violent criminal behaviour with Africans. Also, being bias against transgenders or homosexuals is often rooted in disgust and fear, with the perception being that they threaten traditional values around marriage and male - female gender roles. Not that every form of social bias is threat based; elderly people for example, are passively harmed by being ignored.
Being biased doesn't mean you are morally a bad person. It's not like you decided to have these thoughts. You just happen to live in a society where that is the way things are structured. But you can still be held accountable for your bias, because you have the ability to regulate and override it. Your awareness of the threat response that you have to a group that don't share the same race with you can allow you to regulate it. Prejudice begins because you have made that person a member of a category that is threatening. If you had put that person in a different category from the beginning, you wouldn't have the threat response. SAY NO TO RACISM in all levels. Let us love and accept one another regardless of our race, culture, tradition and religion.
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