In the steps of creating an applied social psychology intervention the first and second are identifying a problem and coming up with a solution. That sounds so simple and matter of fact doesn’t it? In practice though it is clearly not that easy, yet there are some social problems so devastatingly powerful and serious that identifying and coming up with a solution is a literal matter of life and death. Racism in America and the ongoing murdering of black men in America is an ongoing nightmare that has not abated since blacks were freed after the Civil War. I feel a new fresh and honest look at the stakeholder and perpetuating factors aspects of the first and second steps of intervention creation is more than called for in creating more effective programs to deal with this issue.
Identifying a problem is usually built around the idea of stakeholders who have a vested interest in program development. To say that racism in America is a problem and that there is a huge need for intervention is abundantly clear but I don’t think that all those who are stakeholders are aware of their position or relation to this issue. There are people in our country who actually believe and say that we are a post-racial nation now. There are people who with all the sincerity in the world consider themselves to not be prejudiced and go about their daily lives feeling good about themselves for it. And there are those whom even in dense urban settings feel that racism doesn’t affect them and they have no part or stake in it. Truth is I feel that every single person who stands on US soil is a stakeholder and should be aware of that fact. Slavery was an unspeakable social evil created and supported in the light of totally contradictive rhetoric that stated All men are created equal while simultaneously enslaving and debasing their human brethren. The cognitive constructs or schemas built around quieting the cognitive dissonance of doing these horrible actions and keeping them in place for hundreds of years has created a viral like existence to racism in America especially against blacks that I dare say everyone gets exposed. It’s rampant and insidious. Considering that blacks were used as the financial foundation to build the wealth and power of the US and that they we considered not human but living currency to be used at the will and whim of the white men in power called for staunch suppression and repression of cognitive/emotional processes that might undermine the business of slavery and inform those that supported slavery that they were doing something immoral, wrong and evil. The famous Doll Studies done by Kenneth and Mamie Clark and subsequent versions of the study done show the sad truth of how people of all races and in various locations pick up the virus of racism even as little children. If you are not familiar with it please visit this CNN link. http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/13/doll.study/ This particular schema that the children display which has deeply affected their perceptions and therefore their choices and behaviors is I feel the force that perpetuates racism against black in America and negative self hate of blacks towards themselves.
In the creating a solution phase of social interventions I feel that engaging the issue of racism should be done at the level of the schemas currently playing in the minds of almost everyone in America. Specifically finding ways to first illuminate or expose the schema and then dismantle or extinguish it. There have been many studies showing that often time whites, in particular white males are unconscious of their racially biased behavior towards blacks and this is a key problem. The structure, laws, institutions and more seem to be designed with protecting and keeping what I call the white male schema in place. This insures keeping the power, keeping the status quo, and it also insures not having to deal with the cognitive dissonance of emotions of sadness, grief, guilt etc that come along with enslaving, murdering, raping, using and abusing a race of people for your personal benefit. It’s a very deep and hellish thought of being hit with the emotions that those acts would create and this add considerable strength to the walls of these schemas. Black people have their work cut out for them when even the Supreme Court acknowledges that blacks have no part or parcel in the benefits of being an American citizen nor do they have any rights the white people should care to respect. Please watch this video to see the Supreme Court ruling in this matter. This mental position is what put slavery into place from the beginning and has driven governmental policy ever since. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/melissa-harris-perry-black-men-killed-by-police_n_5684588.html Breaching the emotional walls however is I feel the route to take to make change. Beyond laws and policies being created, beyond marches, speeches, lofty intentions and platitudes humans need to feel in order to experience deep lasting and genuine change. My research project is designed around this very idea, of engaging the problem at the level of the schemas and along with cognitive acknowledgment, design an intervention that taps into emotional and physiological awareness to phenomena that surround the existence of racial schemas in America.
The items of stakeholders and perpetuating factors have a very salient existence in regards to the specific topic of white racism against blacks in America because of the high level of denial and cognitive dissonance involved. These factors are as common in the American way of life as the air we all breathe here. It’s almost impossible to escape. It’s not that racist attitudes are impossible to change, but when there is monumental fear of losing power and status and exposure for evils done against others, stakeholders and perpetuating factors both become more deeply infected and entrenched in the sickening madness of hate. The so-called Founding Fathers of this country were either very stupid, very evil or very selfish when deciding to go this route when designing their “free” country. If they thought that treatment of other human beings in this manner would have no consequences or repercussions they were not very wise and don’t deserve all the praise they seem to engender.
References
Billante, J., Hadad, C. (2010). Study: White and black children biased toward lighter skin. Retrieved September 20, 2014 from http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/13/doll.study/
Mirkinson, J. (2014). Melissa Harris-Perry’s Searing Tribute To Black Men Killed By Police. Retrieved September 20, 2014 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/16/melissa-harris-perry-black-men-killed-by-police_n_5684588.html
Clearly racism, and its effects on our society, is a problem that needs our attention. Racially motivated behavior undoubtedly can violate individual rights; and interfere with the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of the victim. We must employ due diligence in our research of the causes and effects of racism in order to fully understand the nature of the problem, and design an effective intervention. In some cases, the nature of the problem is not as simple as we’d like to believe.
Racism is an emotionally charged issue. In order to solve problems caused by racist behavior, applied social psychologists must first divest themselves of their preconceived assumptions about the nature of racism, and why it continues to exist in our society. We must carefully differentiate between precipitating and perpetuating factors (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012) in order to effectively address possible interventions. It is too easy to hold preconceived notions that ultimately affect our decision making process. Psychologist Allan Schwartz blogged about this in his MentalHelp.net article,
“The problem of holding preconceived notions as being true is that they can lead us to very negative and critical beliefs about others and that can affect our behaviors toward others. For example, I know someone who reacted negatively to anti Obama political Emails, characterizing them as racist. His attitude about this was so very strong that he concluded that anyone who is anti Obama, in the next presidential election, is racist. In point of fact, the emails were the typical type of electioneering politics and didn’t have anything to do with race. In addition, his assumption that anyone who is anti Obama is racist is nothing but another example of the prejudicial stereotyping that he finds so offensive.” (Schwartz, 2012)
There are many preconceived notions about racism. Some believe racism was inextricably linked to our nation’s former policy of slavery; but it is important to remember that correlation is not necessarily causation. To argue that slavery in the United States was motivated by racist motives, or was somehow inherently “racist” in nature does not fully take into account the history of slavery as an institution worldwide. It is important to put slavery into historical context in order to assess whether it helped to precipitate the current racial attitudes of American citizens.
At the time of the founding of our nation, slavery had been a fact of life for thousands of years in almost every culture in the world. According to Richard Hellie of the Encyclopedia Britannica (2014), “Slaves have been owned in black Africa throughout recorded history.” Further, millions and millions of those black African slaves were sent to Islamic trans-Sahara, Indian Ocean countries, and other such areas well prior to the export of slaves to the Americas.
The point we need to take from this is that the sale of black African slaves was not motivated by racism, but instead by profit, and the demand for cheap labor. Many settlers in the newly found Americas also became interested in taking advantage of this cheap source of labor; but an unknown fact is that the people in North America were not the biggest consumers of this imported slave labor. According to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, of the approximately 12 million slaves exported from Africa to the “New World,” only six percent were imported to what is now known as the United States (Mintz, 2014). The vast majority of slaves (94%) were sent to the Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
It is possible that the difference in slave importation statistics between the North American settlers and their Caribbean and Central/South American counterparts may have been due to the North American people’s concept of freedom. This desire for freedom from English oppression was instrumental in the development of the American ethos. This ethos was reflected in the country’s founding documents: the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. There is no doubt slavery in the United States was a reprehensible institution, and was contradictory to the American ethos. Many of the authors of the U.S. Constitution recognized that fact, and to suggest the Founders were broadly in favor of slavery is historically inaccurate.
There are numerous illustrations of the fact that key Founding Fathers understood slavery was not consistent with free society. The very fact that Thomas Jefferson included the phrase “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence (despite his often complex stand on slavery) stands as a testament to the noble intention of the Founders.
A key example of this lies with James Madison (an author of the U.S. Constitution and fourth President of the U.S.) who understood that slavery should be “totally abolished” (Federalist No. 42), and believed the end of slave trafficking would be “a great point gained in the favor of humanity.” Madison also acknowledged, “Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!” (Madison, 1788).
Another example is Benjamin Franklin, who was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. Franklin was a staunch advocate for the abolition of slavery. Franklin, as the President of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, wrote in a 1789 public address, “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation, if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils” (Franklin, 1789). There are many other examples of our Founder’s desire to abolish slavery. Unfortunately, in order to form the Union, compromises had to be made to slavery advocates.
Ultimately, to change racist thoughts and behavior, we will have to conduct a great deal of research to fully understand the problem, and to identify effective interventions. The stakeholders of this problem include every citizen in the nation, and the success of such an intervention will undoubtedly enhance the function of our nation. Assigning blame for racism to our government based on its former acceptance of slavery, or to more recent notions of “white privilege.” may seem reasonable from an anecdotal perspective; but in fact, those assertions may not be scientifically sound. Without conducting due diligence in the research of the situation of race in the U.S., we may find that our interventions may be completely off-target, and only exacerbate the problem.
Hellie, R. (2014). Slavery. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/548305/slavery
Franklin, B. (1789). An Address To The Public from the Pennsylvania Society for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of Free Negroes, unlawfully held in Bondage. Retrieved from http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/rbpe/rbpe14/rbpe147/14701000/001da.tif
Madison, J. (1788). Federalist No. 42. The Federalist Papers. Retrieved from http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_42.html
Mintz, S. (2014). Facts about the Slave Trade and Slavery. Retrieved from http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/slavery-and-anti-slavery/resources/facts-about-slave-trade-and-slavery
Schwartz, A. (2012). Preconceived Notions and Their Impact on Thinking and Behavior. Retrieved from http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=46699
I very much wanted to stand up and applaud after reading this. Today, yet another tragic story is making headlines where another unarmed black man was shot by a white officer. I’m aghast that this still goes on. And sadly, the fact that this shocks me is part of the problem. Racism is still very much alive and that fact is very inconvenient to those of us who are shrouded in white privilege. Many of us want to believe the good in our culture is beyond racism now.
To end the bigotry we must find ways for the privileged to open their eyes and admit that we are not perfect and we are indeed capable of bigotry. This is where applied psychology really must become forefront. All of us are victims of racism because it has shaped how we see the world. Denying that fact, only makes it worse. This can mean that I have subconscious racist thoughts that drive my behavior that I don’t want to have such as an unsafe feeling around certain ethnicities. When this happens I actively have to tell myself “NO! This feeling is wrong.” This dissonance of who I want to be and who I really am is not clear cut and can sometimes be messy. Understanding this is only part of the battle.
Society needs an intervention and that intervention needs to be one where everyone can feel okay about themselves when it is complete. I’m just not sure what that looks like or how to begin. Perhaps this kind of conversation is the start.