I knew it! They found where racism is located in your brain.
According to NYU Psychology Professor David Amodio, racism is found in the subcortex. That is where “the basic machinery... to make snap judgments on race is located...Our brains are wired” that way. Also, “the neocortex is... the part of the brain which tries to override prejudice, and which makes you feel guilty... when prejudice escapes.” (Washington Post and Sacramento Bee, Sunday August 22).
According to the article, this is good news for Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the conservative radio talk show hostess. She recently got in trouble for using the N-word in one of her broadcasts. According to the article, her neocortex will now make her feel guilty about what she did, and she will never again use the N-word and be racially insensitive.
Articles like this make me sad. I am sad at the astonishing silliness to which our culture, politics and media chitchat are stooping.
I don’t want to talk about the Laura Schlessinger flap. It’s a tempest in a teapot.
What is tragic, though, is the degeneration of psychology into total reductionism. The desperate search for a chemical/genetic holy grail that will explain all human emotions, attitudes, behavior, culture.
Today, we are told by scientific experts that “we are born racist.”
So I’d like to know: is one also born with Republican or Democratic attitudes? I used to be a Republican. Now I am a Democrat. How did that happen? Did my brain chemistry change? But being from Europe, maybe I have socialist genes?
Look: I am not denying that genetic factors and neural processes have much to do with emotions, thoughts, and behavior. Duh. But how on earth has it come to the point where nature is becoming the overwhelming winner in the old nature-nurture debate?
The simplification and vulgarization of psychology are unquestionable. It seems that the whole society wants the mental to be reduced to the chemical. It is easy to understand why: Were “science” to achieve this, it would offer the promise of easy manipulation. We are already on our way. Hardly any problem - bi-polarity, addictions, neuroses, ADHD, you name it - is approached through means other than psychotropic medications.
Again, only a fool would deny that psychotropic drugs have an important place in fighting mental disease, which is very real, despite what radical libertarians such as Thomas Szasz and Erving Hoffman believed in the 1960s.
But now we are told that medications will also cure racism, hatred and other undesirable attitudes. Of course, obesity has long been on that list already. What about conservatism? Or its opposite, liberalism? Or a desire to get an abortion? Or homosexuality, or homophobia? Or a desire to murder or rape? Or a desire to take vacations overseas?
Now don’t come back at me all outraged that I put all these things on the same list.
My point is that the vocabulary which is being popularized these days - a neuro-scientific paradigm - is an idiotic simplification which can potentially be applied to any attitude or behavior deemed “undesirable” by some group. And more importantly, this quest is as futile as was that of the medieval alchemists. Human psychology will never fully be reducible to chemistry because it is fundamentally cultural. Did the Holocaust happen because Germans had a racist subcortex? leave comment here
9 comments:
I think that the problem lies in our lack of tolerance of each other. Race and racism is such a hot topic these days and it seems as if the right wing conservatives are fueling the debate. I think that we all suffer from racial bias to a certain extent. However, when we treat others unfavorably because of the skin color, linguistic style or religion among other cultural differences we are closing ourselves off to the rick diversity that we each bring to American Society.
I'm with you Tom. Our consciousness is made up of experience that includes a vast array of sensory, genetic--and perhaps subcortical--input. You can't reduce conscious perception or your experience to one source, even though that source may be a factor necessary for your consciousness to exist.
I once kept a puppy in the duck pen so he wouldn't run away. Though he grew large enough to easily kill the ducks--as perhaps his subcortex ordered--he turned instead into their protector and defender. He would chase away any other animal that would come close our ducks.
Nature or Nurture? In the case of racism, I'm willing to bet its much more nurture than nature.
Yes, even though genetics, physiology and "Nature" factors are important, I've always had a bias toward the "Nurture" part of the argument. I think it's a tendency that we all share in wanting something or someone else to be responsible for our behavior... because we're so used to feeling "blamed" and defensive or guilty instead of just responsible.
Bill
Interesting essay. I actually often have thought that conservatives have a different type of brain than liberals. How else can you explain their very different set of values? I am sure they are just as convinced of the 'justness' of their cause as a liberal is. And never the twain shall meet (as if two species were trying to communicate without a common language).
Your criticism is justified. But the notion that prejudice has a specific location in the brain is, in my view, not very significant. It is possible that a certain way of thinking IS actually causing the brain to alter its activity.
But even then: is it a result of the individual interacting and reacting to society or is he predisposed to react a certain way? Probably a mixture of both.
Are we any the wiser with all these studies?
Good comments.Gordon's anecdote is a good reminder that even animal behavior is very much a product of learning (nurture) and not just "instinct." This applies even more to humans, who depend more on learning (culture) and less on instinct than any other creature.
Professor Kando,
You have the best insight and that is why I loved your classes. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think our society is getting nuts, coming up with crazy explanations for all type of behavior. We must have better things to do.
Thanks for your comments,Mary. There are fat grants available for all kinds of research - some of it nonsensical, some of it worthwhile, I suppose...
I think we are the product of our environrment, coupled with the values of our society... topped off by the class you're born into & the vaules of your family home.
Roy wrote:
"I agree with Cat. I think beliefs or feelings of racism can be hardwired to a certain amount, but environment plays a larger factor. In the same arena as sexual attraction, I can't help but notice through the years that my friends and acquaintances who are only attracted to their own race grew up in monochromatic environments. The ones who grew up in my own more multicultural environment nearly all have dated outside their own race. Likewise the ones who grew up in Vallejo harbor less ethnocentric views and attitudes. I don't think that the ones who grew up in the monochromatic environment were any more hardwired to be attracted to blondes than they were hardwired for racism. I think who your peers are at the time you acquire your own identity, just like the opposite gender (or whatever gender your preference is) at the time you form your sexual identity is by far the largest factor."
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