Now I'm realizing how long LaMonte Fowler's essay really is. But I plod ahead with my even longer series in response.
Racism exists. And you are probably a little racist and should work on that. Seriously.
Yep. Guilty as charged. Human beings—and most animals—have always assessed a situation by matching up observable facts with previous experience as quickly as possible. That's how we survive. If you're a rabbit and see a shadow that could be an eagle flit by, you don't stop to think that it might be a seagull, or an eagle with something other than dinner on his mind; you dive into the nearest briar patch. If all your experiences with law enforcement have been negative, you duck around the corner at the sight of a policeman, no matter how innocent you are. If you are ever mugged by an old lady wearing a hoodie and quoting Shakespeare, you'll never look at old ladies, hoodies, or Shakespeare the same way again. You won't look at anything the same way again that you don't immediately recognize as familiar and safe. This gut reaction is not wrong; it's a hard-wired survival skill.
It's also far from limited to racism. In myself I recognize "culturism": my instinctive prejudice kicks in much faster in the presence of tattoos, body piercings, falling-down trousers, foul language, or blasting music than it does for a mere difference in skin shade. But I'll continue to use "racist" as a catch-all term, since that's the one Fowler used.
Because this kind of prejudice is instinctive, not rational, it's useless to try to counter it through rational means. What we can do, through argument, laws, and social pressure, is counter what happens after we've had a chance to analyze a situation and rethink our instinctive response. We can't control our reactions, but we can and must control our actions. It's no sign of guilt to instinctively duck into the alley at the sight of a police car, but when we are stopped by the police, it is our responsibility to speak and act with respect and reasonableness. We may legitimately feel the grip of fear at the sight of a hoodie-wearing old lady with Macbeth under her arm, but that's no excuse for gunning her down—or even for calling the police.
In working on this kind of racism, it's not helpful to call someone a racist. What good does that serve? It would be much better to point out racist actions. One of the first things new parents learn is to separate a child's actions from the child himself. You might say, "It's wrong to hit your sister," or "I can't allow you to hit your sister," or "It hurts your sister when you hit her," or any number of alternatives, but you do more harm than good by saying, "You hit your sister! You're a bad boy!" What is your goal? To built yourself up by making other people feel bad, or to make real progress in human relations?
There is a way to work on the internal racism as well, though it has nothing to do with laws or reasoning or shaming. What alters our instinctive survival reactions? Experience. The more we have positive interactions with people of different races and of different cultures, the less their appearance on our internal radar screen will provoke negative responses. As I've said so many times before, the best antidote to the irrational hatred that is sweeping our country is to seek out the commonalities that show our enemies to be human beings much like ourselves.
Sadly, the process of really getting to know others is often difficult, and always slow. However, it turns out that our brains are remarkably indiscriminate as to what constitutes experience. Studies have shown, for example, that violence in television and movies (and no doubt in video games as well, at least the more realistic ones) provokes neural responses similar to actual, physical violence. The influence of the shows we watch, the games we play, the music we listen to—and also, I would say, the books we read, though many these days give books a free pass—is astonishing.
That influence can do terrible harm. Do we really think we can listen, day in and day out, to lyrics that extol the virtues of raping women and shooting cops, and not see a negative impact on real women, real police?
But it can also do significant good. The power of positive images is enormous. If our favorite TV shows feature likeable, intelligent, kind, positive characters that we can for other reasons identify with, be they black women, Norwegian children, homosexual bankers, Jewish homeschoolers, or Shakespeare-toting old ladies, our deep-seated impressions of the classes of people they represent will be changed—because our experiences, however virtual, have been changed.
This is "Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws," squared.
