WP3-Why Do We Discriminate?
I identify myself as an Asian woman. Fortunately, discrimination hasn’t taken place in my life yet. However, I still witness implicit biases or stereotypes in many forms in my life. For example, the media is categorizing people frequently in their reports. Media tend to describe anonymous people using their race, gender, and immigration status despite the fact that the reports have nothing to do with identities. I often see headlines like “White man attacked two black women …” and “transgender women…” that exaggerate facts in order to attract attention. This is a real-world example of tagging and categorizing people, which exaggerates group heterogeneity.
In this article, I would like to introduce you to the foundation of why people discriminate, the harms of discrimination, and what we should do to tackle this issue. I hope you can better understand what you should do if you are involved in discrimination, understand the mindset of discriminator, and find the best place for yourself after thinking slowly and moral-humbly.
Part 1: Why Do We Discriminate?
Discrimination takes place because of the fact that we tend to “theming” or “othering” people who belong to other groups. I want to introduce a very important concept before we start — “Us Verses Them”. It is “a state of opposition between two groups, mostly based on group membership” (Wikipedia).
Using and Theming does harm to society because people attribute the deeds of individuals to the group. People tend to stereotype others. According to Matt Huston, “We are supposed to empower the “boundary spanners”, but what the media are doing is excluding them” (Huston). Without the existence of such people, the interaction and communication between groups would decrease.
You may have questions like how different am I from other races? Are the oppressed genetically different? In fact, the racial or ethnic minorities that are being discriminated against have nothing different from anyone else. Undoubtedly, it is not the effect of race or genes that creates social issues, according to Mullainathan, for there are very few differences in genes between different races (Mullainathan). It is our society that exaggerates such difference. We can separate factors that influence one’s capability into nature and nurture. Besides skin color, there are few differences in the “nature” of races. It is oppression and subjugation that changes the “nurturing” environment and puts people into classes. However, our society attributes such differences to solely genes and comes up with ideas like eugenics — which is false.
Part 2: Harms of Discrimination
As Kynard said, “Racism, institutional and structural, is not about some kind of general and generic racially… There is never any moment when racism is subtle or exists as some kind of fine mist that is out there but that I cannot fully see on campus.” (Kynard) Racism is something more complicated; it is related to the history of colonization and oppression. Sometimes it is subtle — only the one involved can notice. Sometimes it can change the habit and culture of a region for centuries.
After understanding how discrimination works, you may become curious about why it matters. What would happen if I discriminate?
Discrimination is a serious problem because people who live in the same society begin to divide. One of the psychology theories suggests that “categorization of people is enough to produce hostilities”. (Huston) Othering leads to division and class conflicts. One thing to note here is we all live in the same society.
Some may argue that “groups with highly hostile interactions with neighbors tend to have minimal internal conflict” (Sapolsky 387). Every president tried to make America great again, using this idea in their speeches to enhance group cohesion and loyalty. To some extent, creating hostilities towards others did bond us together more tightly, increase consensus, and efficiency, and make us vote for the same person.
However, it is worth noticing that the group being discriminated against lives in the same society with us. “The path from othering to evil is a slippery slope.” (Jones) You can not just seclude ourselves and avoid confrontation with other groups or countries. Overall, othering decreases the cohesion among the whole world. It will eventually lead to ethnocentrism and collapse of the society. Hostility can help unite us together, but also can destroy ourselves by starting wars. You can see from both the perspective of history and psychology that othering leads to plenty of problems.
Firstly, history has proved to us the profound effect of othering.
Discrimination has a long history of origins. Black people live in communities separately from white people, which is called redlining; colleges consider the student’s nationality and ethnicity during the admission process; some jobs have requirements or preferences over certain gender groups. “Racial differences, which have only relatively recently emerged, are of little Us/Them significance” (Sapolsky 389) Only since the age of discovery, have human beings been enabled by industrialization to meet ethnic groups that live thousands of miles away. We used to be hunter-gatherers, which means that the most different people our ancestors met in their whole lives lived only several miles away. Products of such confrontation with unfamiliar races and ethnicities are countless — cultural colonization, inquisition, wars, robbery, etc. We are not used to heterogeneity yet. There’s still a long way for us to go.
For instance, the class struggle in recent centuries in Latin America is directly related to colonialism. The revolution in the 20th century has a rooted cause dating back to hundred years ago. Indigenous people were oppressed by the conquistadors from the 16th century. The discrimination carried over to the 20th century and led to issues of today like land distribution and uneven distribution of resources. As a sociology and history scholar, I would like to share some of my findings during research.
The following paragraph is my reflection after attending a lecture introducing the Guatemalan Armed Conflict from 1960–1996. It is a civil war against the indigenous people that involves massacre. I hope you may find how colonialism has a long-term effect on a region from my reflection. You may tell from how astonished I was by this fact.
I was expecting to hear about the U.S. hegemony and its role in Guatemala in this lecture. However, the lecture views the conflict from a different perspective. The civil war was caused by rooted exclusion and marginalization of the indigenous people over the past four centuries. As I read words in the Iximché Declaration which refers to the civil war as “attempted genocides” of the “foreign invaders”, I started to realize how profound the effect colonialism has in Latin America, especially in the case of Guatemala. Like Doctor Legras said, among the cold war conflicts in Latin America, it took more time in the case of Guatemala just because it is related to the indigenous people, who are less protected. (Xiao Wu)
You can find similar cases in the U.S. I have read about research done by my previous sociology professor. She researched the distribution of trees in New York and found that white communities have more parks with higher coverage of trees, while black communities don’t even have equal rights on enjoying the greenbelt. “Trees provide many environmental benefits, but low-income communities of color tend to have fewer of them.” (J. Garrison) It is sad to know that certain races don’t even have the right to environmental justice — procedural fairness and distributive equity. This is a product of the redlining policy I mentioned in the last century.
As a result of the residential segregation policies of black and white people, most black people grew up in separated communities and neighborhoods. Those poorer communities tend to have fewer educational resources, which makes the children even harder to change their fate and their social status. In sociology terms, it is called low social mobility. Social mobility stands for the change in social status relative to one’s current social location within a given society (Wikipedia). Biases would eventually lead to such social immobility and division into classes, and low social immobility means revolts and riots. From this example, you can tell how discrimination has effects that last through centuries.
Secondly, stereotyping aggravate divergence because of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias means that you tend to prove the assumption you made instead of overturning it. According to Sapolsky, essentialism has a “magic contagion” (Sapolsky 386). You can like an object, or culture because of a person, or you can hate it. You can like a group because of one person, or you can hate the group due to the effect of contagion. However, this means you are attributing individual actions to the group. This then creates biases.
For example, the character Wynn in the book “Not Our Kind” is fettered by stereotypes. “He turns out to prejudge and objectify women, just as he does Jews.” (Wendy Jones) Wynn has the confirmation bias that he won’t trust Eleanor the first time he saw her, simply because she is Jewish. With this nature, human beings would always lack empathy for other groups. People tend to continue to subconsciously believe in what they think is right instead of thinking thoroughly and objectively. This is why divergence will continue to grow if we are unaware.
Indeed, priming loyalty rises in-group favoritism, while equality leads to the opposite (Sapolsky 379). It is always hard to pursue equality and avoid biases that come from our nature. Nevertheless, I hope you can be aware of harms of discrimination and make the right moral decision.
Part 3: The issue is at stake. So, what can we do?
The first solution I would suggest is moral education. “Instead of pointing the finger outward, we should look inward to ourselves.” (Mullainathan 4) This is to teach the students to create a set of beliefs of their own and undergo the process of moral judgment every time they make decisions. This is the key to “thinking slow” and avoiding biases. “To use the language of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, we think both fast and slow. Even if, in our slow thinking, we work to avoid discrimination, it can easily creep into our fast thinking”(Mullainathan, p4).
There is a similar idea that Paulo Freire suggested in his book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. According to Freire, “dialogue must require an ever-present curiosity about the object of knowledge. Thus, dialogue is never an end in itself but a means to develop a better comprehension about the object of knowledge” (Freire, 18). The very first thing we should teach our kids is to have an objective, humble and curious attitude to new knowledge. Then, as Freire said, we should have a dialogue with the group that we are unfamiliar with to develop real and objective comprehension.
For example, if you have a new student in class who is from a racial minority group that you are not familiar and you are curious about his/her race, don’t always believe what google says about the race. Think slow, ask your classmate, talk to him/her, and judge this person based on his/her action and personality, instead of using your confirmation bias and attributing the group’s culture or habit to this individual.
We follow our intuition when we think fast; we weigh a few factors deliberately when we think slow (Mullainathan, p4). As a result, moral education is effective in forming habits and shaping characteristics. Laws are established to cultivate good habits according to Aristotle (Sapolsky 468). That’s why people like Mullainathan stand out and talk about the right things to do, as a form of moral education. Before making the decision, you really should “think slow” and have a conversation with the group that you are not familiar with.
The second solution would be creating policies that favor the minority.
Let me ask you a question first. Have you every wondered why society build favorable policies for minority groups? Should we compensate for their suffering historically? Should the future generation compensate for their ancestors’ mistakes? Keep reading, and I hope you can find the answer to your questions.
I heard these questions in a history class. My teacher asked us whether we think that West Germany should compensate Israel decades after the holocaust. Similar questions are should the college admission process favors ethnic minorities like black people?
I have met many people who thought it was unnecessary for future generations to account for historical injuries, otherwise, it would be unfair to the offspring of West Germany and white people who may not even know about the massacre or the discrimination. No matter it is out of discrimination, lack of understanding, or simple ignorance, people believed in this statement is “thinking fast” while facing this unfamiliar issue.
I believe that favorable policies are crucial to balance the post-discrimination society. The offspring of the oppressor lives in a society that was built up on the exploitation of money and slavery and labor of the ethnic minority. White people’s offspring are born with privileges and more opportunities, while black people’s descendants are born to endure implicit biases and face unequal distribution of resources.
If we don’t make West Germany compensate, Israel may never recover from the loss of population and destruction of social infrastructure. If we don’t build a favorable college admission policy, most black people may never be able to go to top colleges that require high SAT and good high school background, which is extremely hard to achieve for those black people who have lower average income and live in communities with fewer good educational resources. Think of this, only the one with money can afford SAT tutors. Richer ethnicities can get higher scores more easily.
Some black people make less money, not because they lack capability but rather the quota system. Women and other minority groups are facing a similar problem during employment. I really hope you could understand why we need to correct the discrimination takes place in the past, create favorable policies, and not to judge things or people when you lack knowledge.
We tend to blame others and extenuate ourselves as our nature. Not everyone has the theory of mind to understand others (Sapolsky 468). It is for the common good that we should avoid implicit bias and have empathy for others. We should always think slow to approach the truth and have empathy for others. I hope you will not discriminate others and let your intuition dictate you during your moral decision-making process. Remember, think thoroughly and do not let stereotypes blind you from truth.
Sources:
Deutsch, Elizabeth. “No Conception? No Equality”, The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2016
FreirePaulo. Pedegogy of the Oppressed. The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc.
GarrisonDebatsJessica. Seeing the park for the trees: New York’s ‘‘Million Trees’’ campaign vs. the deep roots of environmental inequality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
Huston, Matt. The Psychology of “Us-vs-Them”, Psychology Today, 9 Aug. 2019
Jones, Wendy. “Us Versus Them, or Not Our Kind”, Psychology Today, 6 Nov. 2018
KynardCarmen. Teaching While Black: Witnessing and Countering Disciplinary Whiteness, Racial Violence, and University Race-Management. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, 2015.
Mullainathan, Sendhil. “Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions”, The New York Times, 3 Jan. 2015
SapolskyM.Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin Press.
