Quote:
Originally Posted by Lhancelot
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The only way you change the hearts of prejudiced people to recognize other groups of people they hate as actual people is to have them spend time around them, to get to know them, so they can learn to understand them as actual human beings that share the same problems, loves, etc. in life.
The problem is, this is very hard to accomplish. Point is, no amount of watching LeBron James on TV is going to humanize black people to prejudiced whites.
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So there's layers right? There's stuff "at the front", like a cop who calls someone a ******. I think we can agree watching American History X probably won't make that guy stop using that word (although who knows, it could). But what I'm talking about is more the institutional racism, which interestingly enough even affects the discriminated (yes, even black police officers treat blacks worse than whites). To solve institutional problems you have to change the institution, or at least the part that sets our thoughts and beliefs ... ie. the media.
Our brains have visual pattern recognition built-in at a deep level. This was handy when quickly deciding whether to run towards or away from some animal out on the savannah ("I've seen this lion pattern before, and I don't want to run towards it ..."), but it's less useful in judging the character of your co-worker based on their skin color. Seeing Le Bron James play basketball won't cure racism sure, but seeing black men (in-person
or in the media) doing lots of things other than play sports and commit crimes will cure your brain of the pattern "black person = athlete or criminal".