Augustus
…
This is an interesting article on race and coalition instincts:
Throughout our species' history, intergroup conflict depended on the categorization of the social world into us versus them. When this divide occurs along racial lines, this categorization and its malignant consequences appear capable of persisting stably. Indeed, ingroup favoritism paired with outgroup indifference or hostility appears to exist in all human cultures (1, 2). The simple act of categorizing individuals into two social groups predisposes humans to discriminate in favor of their ingroup and against the outgroup in both allocation of resources and evaluation of conduct (2–7). Following on historical experience, field and laboratory studies have confirmed that this behavior is remarkably easy to elicit: people discriminate against outgroups even when they are assigned to groups temporarily and anonymously by an experimenter who uses dimensions that are trivial, previously without social significance, and random with respect to any real characteristics of the individuals assigned (2–8).
Most people in modern society agree that racism and racial discrimination are harmful and desire their elimination, although there is significant disagreement on how this is best achieved.
One tenet common in modern progressive politics relates to privileging certain identity markers above all others, key among these is the idea of race. Such a view has become so entrenched that even professing a desire to have a 'raceless' society is seen as offensive and racist.
One argument against identity politics is that by fetishising exclusive identity markers (race, gender, sexuality) above all others, you create divisions which act counter to the intent of a more inclusive society. Instead one should look for inclusive markers of identity that do not depend on an accident of birth.
The following article provides some support for this idea. The more race is used as a marker of identity (and thus form a basis for in/out groups) the more racism increases.
Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization
Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides
PNAS December 18, 2001. 98 (26) 15387-15392;
Previous studies have established that people encode the race of each individual they encounter, and do so via computational processes that appear to be both automatic and mandatory. If true, this conclusion would be important, because categorizing others by their race is a precondition for treating them differently according to race. Here we report experiments, using unobtrusive measures, showing that categorizing individuals by race is not inevitable, and supporting an alternative hypothesis: that encoding by race is instead a reversible byproduct of cognitive machinery that evolved to detect coalitional alliances. The results show that subjects encode coalitional affiliations as a normal part of person representation. More importantly, when cues of coalitional affiliation no longer track or correspond to race, subjects markedly reduce the extent to which they categorize others by race, and indeed may cease doing so entirely. Despite a lifetime's experience of race as a predictor of social alliance, less than 4 min of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race. These results suggest that racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance.
What is most striking about these results is just how easy it was to diminish the importance of race by manipulating coalition—especially given the repeated failure over decades to find other means to influence racial encoding. The sensitivity of race to coalitional manipulation lends credence to the hypothesis that, to the human mind, race is simply one historically contingent subtype of coalition. Our subjects had experienced a lifetime in which ethnicity (including race) was an ecologically valid pre- dictor of people’s social alliances and coalitional affiliations. Yet less than 4 min of exposure to an alternative social world in which race was irrelevant to the prevailing system of alliance caused a dramatic decrease in the extent to which they categorized others by race. This implies that coalition, and hence race, is a volatile, dynamically updated cognitive variable, easily overwritten by new circumstances. If the same processes govern categorization outside the laboratory, then the prospects for reducing or even eliminating the widespread tendency to categorize persons by race may be very good indeed.
Regardless of what one deems normatively desirable, coalitional instincts are very powerful, and human 'rationality' cannot consistently overcome our hardwired tendencies towards irrationality.
In light of this, are those who focus on highlighting racial dimensions of identity unwittingly contributing to perpetuating racism and discrimination? Thoughts?
Throughout our species' history, intergroup conflict depended on the categorization of the social world into us versus them. When this divide occurs along racial lines, this categorization and its malignant consequences appear capable of persisting stably. Indeed, ingroup favoritism paired with outgroup indifference or hostility appears to exist in all human cultures (1, 2). The simple act of categorizing individuals into two social groups predisposes humans to discriminate in favor of their ingroup and against the outgroup in both allocation of resources and evaluation of conduct (2–7). Following on historical experience, field and laboratory studies have confirmed that this behavior is remarkably easy to elicit: people discriminate against outgroups even when they are assigned to groups temporarily and anonymously by an experimenter who uses dimensions that are trivial, previously without social significance, and random with respect to any real characteristics of the individuals assigned (2–8).
Most people in modern society agree that racism and racial discrimination are harmful and desire their elimination, although there is significant disagreement on how this is best achieved.
One tenet common in modern progressive politics relates to privileging certain identity markers above all others, key among these is the idea of race. Such a view has become so entrenched that even professing a desire to have a 'raceless' society is seen as offensive and racist.
One argument against identity politics is that by fetishising exclusive identity markers (race, gender, sexuality) above all others, you create divisions which act counter to the intent of a more inclusive society. Instead one should look for inclusive markers of identity that do not depend on an accident of birth.
The following article provides some support for this idea. The more race is used as a marker of identity (and thus form a basis for in/out groups) the more racism increases.
Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization
Robert Kurzban, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides
PNAS December 18, 2001. 98 (26) 15387-15392;
Previous studies have established that people encode the race of each individual they encounter, and do so via computational processes that appear to be both automatic and mandatory. If true, this conclusion would be important, because categorizing others by their race is a precondition for treating them differently according to race. Here we report experiments, using unobtrusive measures, showing that categorizing individuals by race is not inevitable, and supporting an alternative hypothesis: that encoding by race is instead a reversible byproduct of cognitive machinery that evolved to detect coalitional alliances. The results show that subjects encode coalitional affiliations as a normal part of person representation. More importantly, when cues of coalitional affiliation no longer track or correspond to race, subjects markedly reduce the extent to which they categorize others by race, and indeed may cease doing so entirely. Despite a lifetime's experience of race as a predictor of social alliance, less than 4 min of exposure to an alternate social world was enough to deflate the tendency to categorize by race. These results suggest that racism may be a volatile and eradicable construct that persists only so long as it is actively maintained through being linked to parallel systems of social alliance.
What is most striking about these results is just how easy it was to diminish the importance of race by manipulating coalition—especially given the repeated failure over decades to find other means to influence racial encoding. The sensitivity of race to coalitional manipulation lends credence to the hypothesis that, to the human mind, race is simply one historically contingent subtype of coalition. Our subjects had experienced a lifetime in which ethnicity (including race) was an ecologically valid pre- dictor of people’s social alliances and coalitional affiliations. Yet less than 4 min of exposure to an alternative social world in which race was irrelevant to the prevailing system of alliance caused a dramatic decrease in the extent to which they categorized others by race. This implies that coalition, and hence race, is a volatile, dynamically updated cognitive variable, easily overwritten by new circumstances. If the same processes govern categorization outside the laboratory, then the prospects for reducing or even eliminating the widespread tendency to categorize persons by race may be very good indeed.
Regardless of what one deems normatively desirable, coalitional instincts are very powerful, and human 'rationality' cannot consistently overcome our hardwired tendencies towards irrationality.
In light of this, are those who focus on highlighting racial dimensions of identity unwittingly contributing to perpetuating racism and discrimination? Thoughts?
