Unlike the existing posts in the scientific section of this website, this article does not link to supporting research. I originally wrote this as a comment on Facebook in response to comments about how to stop racism that don’t work, haven’t worked, and are unlikely to work.
Failing to eradicate racism when we only had those old methods was one thing. No one can do something they lack the knowledge or skills to do. But today, right now, in 2020, the amount of evidence-based knowledge we possess that could greatly improve the situation is ignored while the old methods that have repeatedly failed are once again used.
It is time to be true members of the 21st century and use the knowledge that scientists have developed.
This is an article of hope. We have ways to improve race relations and a whole host of other things that nearly everyone would like to see improved. Politicians aren’t interested in resolving these issues. The People need this information because only when The People insist on applying evidence-based solutions will it be done. Now that researchers have developed a body of scientific knowledge that could improve race relationships on a broad scale, we The People need to be knowledgeable about it and apply it to solve this issue.
Here is the Facebook comment I wrote:
You don’t change the heart by pushing against what they are. You change them by showing them very clearly (with love) that their life is better when they love than when they hate. Hate is a highly stressful emotion. Stress, particularly chronic stress, is at the root of most physical, mental, and relationship struggles. The science that supports this statement with accompanying citations to original research is under the science tab on this website.
If people act out of selfish self-interest when they actually understand what is best for them, they will choose love. Read that again.
I cannot imagine how difficult life would be if I chose to hate anyone. I remember being taught to hate Russians as a child during the cold war. My epiphany on this topic came years ago over a meal on a cruise ship with new friends who happened to be Russian. We were all getting along great, having a laughing good time with good food and wine. One of us said, “You know, I used to hate you because my government told me I should.” The other said, “Yeah, I used to hate you, too, for the same reason.”
We then proceeded to have a lengthy conversation that solidified the silliness of hating someone because you’re taught to hate them.
Forgiveness is healthy. It relieves stress. Hate is unhealthy, it perpetuates high levels of stress.
In the ensuing years, one thing I’ve noticed is that a great many people hate large groups of people based on bogus information about those people. They use a broad label that is meaningless at the personal level and decide they hate anyone to whom that label applies. The media fans these flames to increase ratings.
Back to the discussions. If you’ve been alive long, you’ve probably noticed that when you tell someone their position is wrong, the vast majority of people will defend their stance. This is human nature. This won’t change. Yes, some folks can be more open-minded, but we’re not yet at the place where enough people are open-minded enough to change racism through discussions.
We should turn to human nature, the selfishness of humans is well established and it is actually not a bad thing in someone who understands what is good for them. I selfishly choose love. That benefits me, but it also benefits the people I interact with. But I don’t do it for that reason — that’s an added benefit, a bonus. I choose love because I feel better when I make that choice.
When anyone does something to please others, scorekeeping eventually begins happening and it ends up being a battle about who is doing more for the other. Trying to resolve racism for the good of others will keep us in the blame game circle that never ends.
When I recognize that I choose to love you, and you, and you, because it is better for me, there is no score to keep track of because I’m doing what I want and getting what I want. I want to feel good. Check. When I love, I feel good. The fact that my choosing love benefits others does not create a debt they owe me. I am rewarded by my own positive emotions. Even if they choose not to love me back, as long as I focus on loving and not looking for love back, I feel good. If I focus on someone else’s lack of love for me, it is my focus on the lack, not the lack, that makes me feel bad. I am in charge of my focus. We all have the ability to direct our focus in ways that feel good.
If we teach people the facts, the scientific evidence of how stress shortens lives and makes those shorter lives less enjoyable and the people living them ill more often, they will be selfishly motivated to reduce stress. Then we must give them tools and knowledge about how to do that. Our emotions let us know how stressed we are. Negative emotions are indicators that we are stressed. That is the purpose. The body’s system is basically saying, “The way you’re perceiving this situation or what you’re focused on is bad for me and the negative emotion lets you know the mind/body is asking for help.”
When you feel happy, joyful, content, relaxed, it means your mind and body are experiencing less stress.
This is no different than the pain you experience when you touch a hot stove top. It is a message to change what you’re doing because it is causing harm.
Loving feels way better than hating. Loving is way better than hating for your health.
How do you love someone you’ve been taught to hate? Well, getting to know actual individual Russians cured me of the hate I was taught to feel from a young age. So, getting to know people is one way.
Rejecting broad labels for individuals is another way. Broad labels are necessary for things like studying sociology. But when it comes to human relationships, broad labels are damaging. You can pretty much prove this if you’re living at all deliberately. Look at the political party you belong to, does it align completely with your beliefs and desires? No? Now look at the stereotypes people ascribe to individuals in your political party? How little resemblance do they actually bear to your preferences? Someone who isn’t indoctrinated into these stereotypes can see how unreliable they are at the individual level.
I have another example of stereotypes. One of my best friends walked out of South Africa on her bare, bleeding feet to escape Apartheid. She was given asylum in the UK. A few years ago when she was visiting me, a Facebook friend she’d made a few hours from my home wanted to meet her so we drove over there. The Facebook friend was very honored to meet my friend (She’s an amazing woman.) One of the things she did was create a playlist of music for her visit for us to dance to. The only thing was, it wasn’t the type of music my friend prefers. It was Motown, which happens to be one of my favorites. My African friend? She likes Dolly Parton’s music. We visited Dollywood a few days later.
Stereotypes are garbage at the individual level. Don’t use them to attempt to understand individuals.
How do you replace hate with love? Everyone is on a journey while they’re here. We all have our struggles. We all do our best given our current circumstances. No one wakes up and says, “Today I’ll do my worst.” Even if someone decides not to try, there is an underlying reason. Sometimes that is a belief that their efforts won’t make a difference. The research on Learned Helplessness bears this out. Sometimes they’re pessimistic and can’t find a way to believe they can achieve their personal dreams and goals, so they see no reason to exert energy. We only do things that we have hope will make a difference.
Begin looking at those who don’t do as you do or as you’d like them to do with compassion. Try to uplift instead of denigrating them. Given at the right time, the power of an encouraging word can be massive.
Another thing that made a big difference when I was working with teenagers was helping them understand that our thoughts are mood-congruent. If a child has a parent who is angry, the parent won’t see the child’s beauty. The child can end up trying to please the parent, but until the parent changes their internal workings and stops being angry, it is not possible to please them. A child could get a 99%, the highest grade in the class, and an angry parent will complain that they didn’t get 100%.
There are thousands (probably hundreds of thousands of children) who grow up trying to please someone who can’t be pleased. This leads to low self-esteem. Attempting to raise low self-esteem by talking about it rarely works. The cure, just like the cure for racism, is understanding how the human mind works. When those teenagers learned that their parents perceived them in a negative light because of the effect of what researchers call “mood-congruent thought” and that their dissatisfaction with the child was not personal — it would be the same with a perfect child — they were released from the bondage created when you attempt to please an unpleasable person.
We now know so much about how the human mind works but that information is not reaching the general public or children fast enough. When new tech comes on the scene, there is a pipeline that gets it to market quickly. With new knowledge, that isn’t the case.
There are other factors that affect human behavior and relationships including sleep deprivation which is rampant in high crime areas that have sirens going off throughout the night. Sleep deprivation also interferes with the ability to learn because of its negative impact on memory.
Illnesses, emotional upset, traumas, and education also affect what someone does (behavior and cognition).
Two of the books I’ve written take a deep dive into the connection between behavior and emotional state. The scientific evidence is clear that it isn’t about good and bad people. It is about people who aren’t too stressed to be good who are good and people who are too stressed who commit crimes. The researchers who study this even concluded that when they got into the minds of serial killers, they could see how, from the perspective of the killer, their actions made sense from that perspective. This will cause resistance in most people. I spent years reading the research and it took a long time to come to the same conclusion. But the evidence points to a better way to prevent crime, one that has already proven beneficial in longitudinal studies.
Teaching children social and emotional stress skills that allow them to reduce the stress they experience (without requiring a change of circumstances), improves every outcome including graduation rates, behavior (less criminal behavior even in at-risk youth), less drug and alcohol use, less suicide and mental illness, better relationships, higher college admittance, and higher college graduation rates. There isn’t anything we want that isn’t improved by this approach because stress has a strong impact on behavior, cognition, health, and relationships.
When we learn these skills and apply them to ourselves is when we begin recognizing behaviors of others that we disapprove of would be better if the world were kinder and they had these stress management skills. For me, that made me decide to be kind. I defined myself as a kind person and seek not to do anything (words or actions) that are not kind. I also developed a great deal more compassion for individuals who are not behaving well (committing crimes, etc.). It’s not an excuse, it is a different approach. Our current criminal justice system was based on the paradigm of good and bad people. Science has debunked that premise but we persist in using the old system despite the evidence that it perpetuates the problem. (I am not advocating opening the prisons and emptying them — I am advocating a concerted effort to teach all children skills that will greatly reduce the chances they will end up in prison which would empty many of the prisons in a generation because of the lack of criminals.)
When you tell anyone they are wrong, the normal human reaction is to dig in their heels and defend one’s position. Approaching racism from the side, by understanding how our mind and body work together and what contributes to and detracts from health will lead anyone who follows the path to decide that hating others is bad for themselves. It isn’t just hating that is bad. When we feel good (which we can do when we aren’t hating), our behavior toward others improves. This is a natural process. There’s a research study that showed that when stressed, even a priest would ignore someone’s distress. Remove the stress and compassion returns.
If I were to do something bad to someone else, I would feel worse. That makes me selfishly want to be nice to other people. When someone feels bad, harming someone else can provide a temporary improvement in their emotional state. When we take care of our own emotional stance and learn how to change our perspectives so we can be happy, we become naturally (without effort) kinder.
We also become more inclusive — naturally. Human brains do an “us” “them” calculation. Researchers have found that when we’re happy, our circle of “us” expands. When we’re unhappy, it contracts. So, learning how to reduce stress expands the people we consider “us”.
There is a second, more deliberate way to broaden your circle of “us” which is what eliminating racism is all about. Humans define their “us” at an individual level. For some people, “us” includes only immediate family. For some it includes broader labels. Examples include fans of a sports team, classmates, members of one’s religious institution, neighbors, exended family, people who share our race, people in our town (usually in small towns), people who share our nationality, etc.
After the incident with the Russians, I thought a great deal about how I defined my “us” which was largely American. I wasn’t taught to be racist as a child (thank you Mom & Dad), but I was taught to believe that being born at a latitude and longitude that resulted in me being an American made me somehow better. I decided that the latitude and longitude of one’s birth doesn’t make one person better than another. It determines Nationality which is important for some things (where you send your tax return, for example), but not important when it comes to value and worth questions.
Then I chose to deliberately shift my belief to make my “us” the human race. In the years since then, my circle of friends has expanded greatly. My best friend is an Australian who lives in Australia. Another best friend, the one I mentioned earlier, is a UK citizen but South African by birth. Another friend who has sadly passed on was Canadian. My life is immensely richer because of my relationships with these three women. I recognize that those relationships would have never come about if I’d still been defining my “us” as Americans.
There are many selfish reasons to expand one’s definition of “us”. The biggest one is that it is more comfortable being around people in your “us” group than people in your “them” group. If you expand your circle broadly enough, you never have to put up with “others” because everyone is “us” which is a great stress reducer.
After your brain makes the “us” “them” determination, your automatic behavior is based on which category they fall into. If they’re in the “us” category, you’ll have natural urges to trust and defend them. If they’re in the “them” category, you’re more likely to distrust them.
The bottom line is that people aren’t going to change to please others. But if they are shown a path that benefits them, they are likely to change for selfish reasons. Making humans not be selfish would be far harder than eliminating racism. And, selfishness isn’t bad when you selfishly want things that are good for others.
When I was teaching a class at a day facility for individuals who had mental health and addiction recovery needs, I did a little experiment. I asked this group of individuals, all of whom were struggling in their own lives in many ways, including financially, a series of questions, it was apparent that they selfishly wanted good things for other people.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Would you like everyone to have enough to eat? Would you feel better if no one went to bed hungry because they didn’t have food?
- Would you like everyone to have a safe place to sleep at night?
- Make a list of five things you would change if you could.
Now, review that list. Is there something on that list that is for the benefit of others?
In the group I was teaching, I only asked for three things on their list and all of them had a desire for someone else. Often they were simple things, such as picture frames for a sister to put photos of her children in, a coat or shoes for someone else, colored pencils for a classmate, etc. We selfishly want good things for other people because it makes us feel better when everyone is okay. But we can’t see this when we feel like we’re being attacked. When we’re attacked, the attackers become “them” and that stops our mind from wanting to help them.
But even in an attack, we can step back and ask ourselves, “Why are they doing this?” “How do they feel threatened?” We don’t have to retaliate, quid pro quo.
Someone has to lead the way or humanity will remain trapped playing out these scenarios for another hundred years.