Becoming Aware of My Own Unconscious Racism
In my opinion, the subtle unconscious racism of educated liberal people like myself must be recognized and dealt with as one of the remedies to deal with this systemic issue in our country. The problem has many causes, of course: the poor educations most black, Hispanic and Native American people receive, the relatively poor health care they get, the lower wages they receive in comparison to what white people get with the same educational and experience levels, the awful criminal justice system, etc. And we know about the overt racism by many Americans, particularly in the South. We cannot do very much about this. But one area I and other psychologists can focus on is the subtle, unconscious racism in well-meaning people like us who think we are not racist. Our unconscious racism is an important part of the problem because we can then easily avoid dealing with it in a substantive way. We can say “I am not racist. I don’t discriminate against other races.” We actually do, but are just not aware of it because it’s unconscious One cause is a lack of personal exposure to what minority people go through. I myself don't come into contact with that many minorities in Oregon in comparison to LA, and it has been shown that personal, continual contact with minorities results in a decrease of racism. This happens, for example, in the integrated armed forces. I did come in contact with many hispanic people living in one of the canyons in the LA area. Hispanic undocumented day workers congregated at the local post office, hoping to get some odd jobs in the community. My wife and I hired many of them through the years, and I was always interested in why and how they came to the US. I found them to be honest, hard working people who were only interested in supporting themselves and, if possible, to make enough to send some money home. So I learned to have a generally positive attitude toward them.
Unfortunately, I did not learn the same lessons about black people. I was taught as a teenager many years ago by my father that black people were equal to whites. As a result of that teaching and my education, I took an overtly egalitarian view of black people. Yet probably partially because of the way black people were portrayed on TV, movies and in newspapers through the years, I had an unconscious bias against black people that I discovered, shockingly, during a visit to San Francisco about 35 years ago. I went to visit for a weekend with my two oldest children, who were renting a house in an area about three blocks from a predominantly black neighborhood. I took a couple of puffs from a joint soon with my kids after I arrived and then walked to buy some food from a Mexican restaurant for our dinner. Because I was a bit high I was much more aware of my senses and emotions. I saw some black people walking toward me and suddenly realized I was feeling very frightened! Note these were ordinary people, not raucous black youths. And as I passed them, I realized they looked frightened of me! This was the start of realizing that, despite my overt beliefs about equality, I was subtly prejudiced against black people. I don’t think I would have even realized this were I not stoned on pot.
My Continued Awakening
Through the years I have had contact with a few black people in my profession. I had a few black psychologists in training groups and in workshops I ran. But these people tended not to talk about their personal experiences of racism and I, not being very aware of it, did not indicate I was interested in hearing about it. I have also never had a close black friend. In subsequent years, I knew cognitively about what black people go through by reading about them in books and seeing movies depicting their travails. But it's been only in the past few years that I found out about the thousands of black people who were lynched, how they were redlined against when they tried to buy houses, how they were prevented from getting good jobs, the poor educations they received, etc. I learned from a couple of recent movies and a couple of books about the real horrors of slavery. And I welcomed what I learned. I was so upset, however, about the horrible, murderous treatment slaves received in reading a couple of autobiographies by Frederick Douglass that I had to put them aside.
Some Reasons Black People Elicit Conscous and Unconscious Racism
One reason why black people are seen as lesser throughout the white world is because they obviously look different. Asians, Middle-easterners, and Native Americans are also different because of their facial structures, but the dark skin color of blacks is, I think, a very important determiner of whites seeing them as different and strange. And the prejudice can be the result of a vicious circle that some blacks have a part in. Some black people, for example, do act in a way to be annoying to some whites. For example, several years ago I went to a local small coffee shop to get a cup of coffee. The owner also sold snacks such as cans of soda, candy, etc. While I was waiting for my coffee to be made, four black teenaged boys came in, talking loudly and aggressively. One picked up a can of soda and demanded the owner give it to him for much less than the retail cost. I'm sure the same behavior could have occurred by a white kid in certain neighborhood, but this is an upper middle class neighborhood in a white city with a very low percentage of black residents. I, of course, had some idea why these kids behaved that way: the discrimination they've faced, their justified hatred of white people, particularly because of their probable treatment by the white students from the school they attended, their feeling they would rather be aggressive toward than aggressed against, and many other causes. But I was put off by their behavior and my first thought was, “Oh, it’s like those typical rowdy black kids to behave that way.” But then I felt guilty about the way I immediately put them into the category of the gang members that achieved so much notoriety in LA for many years while I lived there. But while I was able to realize what I had thought and considered why they behaved that way, most people probably don’t go through that process. After all, most people tend not to consider the underlying causes of the behavior they observe, just react to the behavior itself. This is also true of most of my married clients who have complained about their partners' behavior through the years. Much of what they said did sound outrageous to me. But I have often discovered, in one way or another, their outrageous actions toward their partners that triggered that behavior from them. When one sees a news account of a person committing a crime, whether it's by a white or a black, we condemn the criminal and hardly ever get information about what triggered that behavior. And when it's a black person committing the crime, it's all too easy for us, unconsciously, to conflate that into our negative unconscious category of “angry black people.” And black people, like those teenagers in the coffee shop, sometimes contribute to these stereotypes. I’m not speaking judgmentally, just causally.
One area which presented a dilemma to me in the past occurred when I was teaching an online course for psychologists with master’s degrees who were working toward PsyD degrees. In some classes there was a black student who had relatively poor writing skills and psychological knowledge compared to most of the white students. I understood that at least some of the students had been hampered by not having had the level of education of most of the white students. But I didn’t want to pass them just because I felt sympathetic to them. I felt responsible to help turning out doctorate level people who would be credits to the profession. I wanted to help these black students get up to speed, but did not have the time or energy to make up for their years of poor education. At least one woman became very defensive, even hostile, accusing me of being racist when I pointed out that she needed to improve her performance. But I did what I could with her and the other students.
The most enlightening experiences I've had on a personal level about what black people go through on a continual basis is working with some black clients in the past few years. I have heard first hand about the continual, negative attitudes, usually very subtle, that they encounter almost every day. Some of them have, because of past experience, entered social situations expecting mistreatment and, by their covert chips on their shoulders,, may have actually triggered the negative reactions of the whites in the environments. But this often made them feel in conflict and unsure about how much they had “caused” and how much they were innocent of causing. In any case, it’s a complicated issue to parse out. Black people have been suffering for 400 years of first, slavery, and then another 150 years of oppression. People who say that slavery and Jim Crow ended a long time ago, are not aware of the continued psychological effects that get handed down from generation to generation to black people today. But the white person who doesn’t get the personal stories of black people does not become aware of what they experience and thus can’t really understand them. And not realizing the insidious unconscious effects of years of seeing non-whites portrayed in negative, stereotypic ways in movies and TV shows, they have no way of correcting these stereotypic attitudes.
My Recommendations for People in Dealing With Racism
So, what do I recommend well-meaning white people like my fellow therapists do? First, become aware of your own unconscious racism. There is a test Harvard University has created to tap into unconscious racism. There are also tests in this series about other isms: sexism, homophobia, attitudes about people who are overweight, etc. The website is: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html Second, try to notice the emotions you experience , both positive and negative, when you visualize different black people in various situations: varying skin colors; nose and lip sizes; negroid, frizzy hair vs. straight hair; word pronunciation; grammar, etc. Third try to get an actual, personal experience with black persons in some way, either with black colleagues, clients, or in an encounter group with mixed races. Fourth, don't make the mistake, if you are a therapist, and do work with a black client, to be too eager to elicit information about their experiences with racism. They may be willing to do so only after long experience and feeling safe with you. After all, they probably have had years of negative experiences with whites and, just as you probably are unconsciously racist, they are too , against white people. Finally, this issue, amongst all of the other huge problems we have on our planet, can feel overwhelming and can lead to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. This can easily apply to the very knotty, long-standing issue of racism against black people, Native Americans and Hispanics. It can feel psychologically more comfortable to just take the position that you can do very little, so why bother. That attitude can certainly lead to much less internal upsetness and conflict. But think about actions you can take that you are reasonably comfortable doing. Doing nothing is precisely what I and most other people have done through the years. Avoiding the problem will just make things worse and worse, and we will all suffer in the long run.
As always, I welcome comments to this posting.