Sign in Subscribe

Can psychology help us beat racism?

Matt Hussey

• 4 min read
Can psychology help us beat racism?

That sounds like an odd question, doesn't it? Can a scientific discipline really help us combat discrmination based on race?

But I wanted to explore this topic with you all using a therapeutic lens to try and reveal some of the mechanics that make up racist beliefs, so that we all might be a wee bit better at helping identify it as and when it happens.

Before I go on, I think it's helpful to have a clear and concise definition of what racism is in order for us to understand how it's applied.

What is racism? 💭

“Racism is a system of advantage based on race. It is a hierarchy. It is a pandemic. Racism is so deeply embedded within U.S. minds and U.S. society that it is virtually impossible to escape,” says Steven Roberts, a Stanford University psychologist and lead author of a review of all the academic literature called "The Psychology of Racism."

Sidenote: I'll be referencing research that might focus on the US or another country, but I feel the ideas apply across borders.

A brief history of racism 📖

Psychologists have been exploring racism for a lot longer than most of us realise. Initially, evolutionary psychologists looked at how early humans interacted with each other as a way of understanding how racism forms.

One theory suggested it was because of competition for resources that lead to groups competing with each other. As some communities grew more powerful, they subjugated less successful groups. That subjugation then became codified in a communities' culture, and thus racism was born.

Pascal Boyer, an evolutionary psychologist was one such advocate of this theory. But more recently, psychologists have challenged this idea. Human beliefs argues Steve Taylor, a senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Becket University, are not as set in stone as people once assumed they were.

Studies of hunter-gatherer groups that exist today show that this idea of constant competition leading to racism doesn't seem to apply.

Anthropologist Jonathan Haas, when studying prehistory North America found, "no evidence of territorial behaviour on the part of any of these first hunters and gatherers. Rather, they seem to have developed a very open network of communication and interaction that spread across the continent."

Instead, psychologists now focus on racism as a form of psychological defence when we think our identities are being threatened.

A slippery slope 🛝

Terror Management Theory believes that threats, perceived or real, drives people to grab onto ideas or identities to help ease their anxiety and give them a sense of security and belonging. When left unchecked, those ideas can fester into racism and violence. This, says researchers such as Jeff Greenberg and Sheldon Solomon, happens in stages.

In the first stage, when someone feels insecure or lacking an identity, they show a stronger desire to affiliate themselves with a group to help provide a stronger sense. This could be anything from a football club, a national identity, a community or religion. Sidenote: I'm not saying that these things exist purely to give insecure people meaning, it's more about how people use communities to bolster their own sense of who they think they are.

However, that affiliation can evolve. The individual feels belonging to a group doesn't ease their anxiety fully, and so starts to form a hatred of other groups. This, says psychologists, provides a clearer boundary to the group's identity and helps bond the group together.

Aggression towards the other 🥊

In the next phase, the group doubles down. It shows kindness and compassion to those inside the group, and a distinct lack of empathy, bordering on cruelty to those outside. This can then lead to a group's identity engulfing that of the individual. Any individuality or objection to that identity could be used to expel that person from the group, and thus the identity they have formed.

Lastly, and most dangerously, as the group still finds itself under threat, it projects those feelings of inferiority outwards, and blames the existence of other groups as the cause. Those groups are then often attacked as a form of revenge for those feelings of inadequacy.

I appreciate this all sounds a bit abstract and you'd be hard pushed to find a group like this living among us and following these stages.

But the ideas outlined above suggest that racism comes, initially, from a place of low self-esteem and a weak sense of self. Those low self-esteem individuals then seek out others who feel the same to help validate those ideas and provide a sense of meaning. There's also a whole field of study about prejudice and discrimination that puts racism alongside other forms of discrimination. You can easily swap out racism in the above model for drug addicts, other genders, or disabilities.

More work to be done 🚧

While this is not a complete look at how racism works in a society - the study I referenced at the beginning on the Psychology of Racism looks at public policy, sociology and psychology as a whole to create a more complete picture of how racism is applied.

It's also important to point out that society can exert racist ideas on communities in ways unbeknownst to many of those who live in it. As communities become more nuanced, so the ways they exert influence do too.

But as a starting point, hopefully this gives us a better understanding of how these ideas form and why they endure.

Ok, where can I learn more? 📚

Sign up for more like this.

Enter your email
Subscribe