The Toll Racism Takes On The Brain September 20, 2007

Science Daily yesterday printed a news release of the findings of a new study from Princeton University. The study shows that subtle, “under-the-surface” racism takes a greater toll on one’s cognition than overt, outwardly expressed racism. Princeton psychologists Jessica Salvatore and J. Nicole Shelton ran an experiment in which volunteers, both black and white, witnessed a fake “company”’s hiring decisions from the inside, complete with racist overtones, and then took a standardized test of cognitive ability.

The premise of the study:

All human beings are driven by a few core needs, including the need to understand the world around us. When people do things to us, we must know why, and if we are uncertain we will spend whatever cognitive power we have available to diagnose the situation.

The problem is that we have limited cognitive resources, so when we are solving one problem, we have difficulty focusing on another at the same time. Some psychologists reason from this that subtle racism might actually be more, not less, damaging than the plain antipathy of yesterday, sapping more mental energy. Old-fashioned racism–a “No Negroes Allowed” sign, for example–is hateful and hurtful, but it’s not vague or confusing. It doesn’t require much cognitive work to get it. But if you’re the most qualified candidate for a job, and know it, and still don’t get the job for some undisclosed reason–that demands some processing.

Fair enough. This premise was consistent with the findings of the study:

The experiment left no doubt about which candidate was best qualified, and sometimes that candidate was chosen, sometimes not. Sometimes the company passed over the best candidate for blatantly racist reasons; the reviewer might comment that the candidate belonged to “too many minority organizations,” for example. Other times the best candidate was simply passed over for no good reason. The psychologists ran the experiment many times, in every combination, so that both black and white volunteers saw black candidates reviewed by whites and by blacks and the same for white candidates.

After witnessing these fair and unfair hiring decisions, the study volunteers took the so-called Stroop test. During this test, the names of colors flash on the screen for an instant, but in the “wrong” colors (the word “red” in green letters, for example), and the idea is to quickly identify the color of the letters. It tests capacity for mental effort, and the idea in this study was to see if experiencing subtle racism interfered with that mental capacity.

It did, at least for blacks, and more than the overt racism did. As reported in the September issue of Psychological Science, black volunteers who had witnessed unfair but ambiguous hiring decisions did much less well on the Stroop test, suggesting that they were using all their mental resources to make sense of the unfairness….Interestingly, white volunteers were more impaired by overt racism than by the more ambiguous discrimination. Salvatore and Shelton figure this is because whites rarely experience any racism; they do not even notice the subtle forms of racism, and are thrown off balance when they are hit over the head by overt acts.

Many blacks, by contrast, have developed coping strategies for the most hateful kinds of racism; it’s the constant, vague, just-below-the-surface acts of racism that impair performance, day in and day out.

We’ll add this to the now over 100 studies documenting links between racism and physical and psychological heath. Racism-related stress is linked to heart disease and stroke. Perceived racism is linked to blood pressure. Subtle racism is linked to depression and anxiety.

This Stroop test, however, measures cognitive acuity — how quickly can a person assess what’s being presented to them — and because of this it is unique. As the Association of Psychological Science’s We’re Only Human blog points out, life is not a series of Stroop tests. Life is comprised of series of situations which require mental prowess and focus. A victim of covert racism is probably not going to have to sit in front of flash cards after being showed out of a store or turned down by a taxi driver.

That person is, however, going to have to, perhaps, enter in someone’s medical history information to prevent a prescription interaction. They may have to get behind the wheel of a car. They may have to take an examination for a job. These things could have disastrous or lamentable outcomes because of the extra 0.2 seconds it takes for the victim’s brain to process information.

To connect this back to my own personal home, it is already known in the Jewish community that non-white Jews go “off the derech” (leave Jewish observance) at a much higher rate than their White counterparts. Perhaps, in light of this study, we can understand another facet of this phenomenon…

Jewish learning is such that it is highly focused. Stories abound of rabbis who were so engrossed in learning that they’ve burned food, fallen on floors, etc. Talmudic in-depth learning (iyun) requires one’s full attention and focus. Additionally, Jewish Law frowns very solidly upon disrespecting other Jews. One can be sued for an insulting statement (Choshen Mishpat), and laws of evil speech (loshon hara) and the subsequent penalties for their transgression (e.g., a person can lose the merit of all their good deeds performed) are already the subject of dinner table discussions and sole platforms of entire organizations. Only the most crude neanderthal says the N-word or calls someone a shvartzer in yeshiva, in a place of learning.

But the quite subtle, quasi-permitted paternalistic racism (”oy, nebach (poor guy), he’s going to have such a hard time getting married”) or other veiled slights (”oh, wow, I thought you never knew your father” I was told a couple times by people with whom I had never discussed my family), take their toll as Drs. Salvatore and Shelton show. As a result of racism, maybe the black child who can’t learn Tosfos’ commentaries without losing himself in his thoughts is going to be said “not to have sitzfleisch” (i.e., he can’t sit still). He “can’t learn as well” as the other bochurim — something which will undoubtedly, if not by the rabbi himself then by an ignorant bystander, be at least connected to his ethnicity.

Perhaps racist cognition is a by-product of the human condition.

But every person who has a belief in a Power greater than themselves knows that they almost invariably can rise above “the human condition” to be what G-d wants them to be, with His help.

And it is horribly sad when the same people who teach spiritual transcendence allow themselves willingly to be sucked down into the cesspool of the lowest common human denominators.