Call Me Crazy!

One of the great things about science is that the more we learn the more we can do away with superstitions and practices that have no basis in science. For example, we know that aging is not genetically linked. It is linked to the break down of mitochondria in cells that release free radicals. Therefore, I may not need to diet, exercise, and not smoke or drink alcohol. I might actually do better by drinking red wine, getting enough sleep and being lucky. Science tells us that there is a genetic link to some forms of cancer. Certain markers make some people more likely to develop cancer in their lifetimes than other people. Scientists have worked to develop diagnostic tests for those markers and they have worked for better treatments administered earlier in the cancer’s development.

Science has been amazing and still science is just a method, a tool, a process. It should not have god like power in our lives. Quite the contrary. Scientists recently reported that men may not need to get prostate exams and PSA tests as early as previously recommended because prostate cancer is a slow developing disease and it is more likely a man would die of natural causes than from prostate cancer. I am fairly conversant with the scientific method, medical advances, etc. and I have not one iota of faith in scientists telling me to delay prostate exams or PSA tests. The medical profession and its historical relationship to African-Americans is depressing. The medical profession sought to validate the inherent inferiority of African-Americans since colonial times. The medical profession turned a blind eye to the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments that lasted for decades. The medical profession routinely provides disparate medical treatment to African-Americans. Much of this is documented in a book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington. This book was released in paperback earlier this year.

So call me crazy if I don’t listen to a medical establishment that has viewed my ancestors as sub-human test subjects routinely violating the mantra of 'do no harm.' It’s unfortunate that unlike the majority of the male population in this country I have no basis to trust anything I am told by the medical establishment. Maybe once we have the big talk about race in this country I can move beyond my mistrust of virtually every institution in this culture, the medical profession being only one of them.

The Racism Root Kit

My business partner and I created an experiential workshop called Bridges & Boundaries© which gives the participants an opportunity to look at race/racism/privilege and gender issues tied to race. It is partially didactic and has been a good learning laboratory for us to see the behavior of the culture up close and be able to de-construct it. What has been really enlightening has been the discovery and explication of what we call the Racism Root Kit. Essentially a root kit is a computer program that hides its existence from the operating system. In humans it would be be a set of behaviors that whites engage in when confronted with issues of race to avoid admission of complicity, participation or collusion. It operates to keep out of the consciousness the presence of racist thoughts, behaviors or beliefs. We have identified more than a dozen of these behaviors which we categorized as either offensive or defensive. There is also a similar set of behaviors that people of color engage in when forced to confront their internalized oppression. We are very clear with the participants that those behaviors, beliefs or thoughts do not make them bad people. We stress to them that good people can be burdened with the knapsack of privilege and this is simply about telling the truth about race/racism and privilege.

This concept is a really radical approach to looking at why race is such a difficult topic for Americans to confront. After submitting to several academic journals the article was rejected as not being empirical enough. There is no data set that can be statistically analyzed to prove the concept, which is ironic given it is a new theoretical concept. The real irony is that it is likely the Root Kit kicked in with the reviewers as at some level they were challenged to look at their racism or a more pernicious phenomenon, internalized oppression. So I decided that maybe a scientific approach might be better. That way, the empiricist reviewer would have data that would likely create more internal dissonance. I thought building on the work of a Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske would be a good start. She conducted research on in-group/out-group recognition using a fMRI, (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) procedure to examine whether the part of the brain that recognizes human beings would light up when exposed to images of out-group members like homeless people or drug addicts. She found that the brain structure did in fact not light up when exposed to out-group members. This means that out-group members were not recognized as human beings according to the neuro-imaging. So how might that relate to race? Might whites not recognize people of color as human beings? If so, is there some physiological component to racism? After some discussions with a psychiatrist at Northwestern University who does research in brain imaging we discovered that race was considered a ‘nuisance’ variable in this type of research and it was unlikely that we could get any research funding to exam this phenomenon. So one of the burdens that I live with everyday in a society built on the premise of white supremacy is a nuisance variable in the minds of my fellow academics. Hmmmm. Then I see an episode of Nova scienceNow on public television where some researchers are trying to discover how human beings learn to speak by looking at the vocal patterns of song birds and to my surprise one researcher was able to get funding to use fMRI technology on song birds. Song birds???? It was then I knew that I was not cut out to be in the Academy much longer.

For all of its contributions to humanity, the Academy is probably the largest concentration of dissociated narcissists in the country. Race, the enduring pathology in our culture is a nuisance variable, and how song birds sing warrants the use of fMRI technology. I believe we will continue to do Bridges & Boundaries© and work with people on race, racism and privilege and not expect the ‘great minds’ of our era to understand, appreciate of even care about such nuisances.