Three decades after King, a report card

As America celebrates Martin Luther King Jr.'s fight against racism and discrimination, psychologists worry about the subtler forms of prejudice.

By Scott Sleek
Monitor staff

Just months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. issued a lofty challenge to psychologists. In a keynote speech at APA's 1967 Annual Convention in Washington, D.C. (see page 26), the civil rights leader called on social scientists to find the reasons so many white Americans resisted equal opportunities for black people.

Today, after considerable strides in meeting that challenge, psychologists have discovered that the study of prejudice, rather than getting easier, has become more complex. Compared with the open bigotry that still existed in the late 1960s, the white resistance that King mentioned now operates in subtler, even unintentional ways, scientists say.

'The research suggests that contemporary racism is fundamentally different from the old racism, where people said what they meant and meant what they said,' says John Dovidio, PhD, a well-known race-relations researcher at Colgate University. 'People today are more likely to publicly express feelings of open-mindedness, but may have negative feelings and beliefs that they aren't necessarily aware of.'

Social scientists are increasingly trying to unmask these more shadowy forms of prejudice that continue to disenfranchise ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, and lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.

In celebration of King's birthday this month and his legendary fight for civil rights, the Monitor spoke with several psychologists who are recognized leaders in the study of prejudice and discrimination. They shared their thoughts on the obscure forms of prejudice that exist today, and how psychology can help quell those sentiments.

Janet Helms, PhD, a University of Maryland psychology professor who studies racial identity, believes silent forms of racism persist because of a fundamental problem: White people forget that they, too, belong to a distinct race.

'When white people on average think of race, they're only looking at the other person's race, not their own,' she says.

In the early 1980s, Helms developed the white racial identity model-the theory that whites will transcend racism only when they realize that their values and beliefs are not the societal norm, but rather an outlook unique to their racial heritage. By accepting their own racial identity, whites can better accept other racial groups, Helms says.

'White people need to understand that they have a race, and that their race is the dominant race and determines the standard for other people,' she says. 'Until then, we won't overcome the racism that exists.'

Like other ethnic-minority scholars, Helms believes that psychologists have spent sufficient time studying the experiences of victims of racism, and not enough time understanding the factors that prompt whites to engage in racist behavior in the first place. Social science, she argues, needs a greater focus not only on whites' responses to people of other races, but on the experience of being white.

Derald Wing Sue, PhD, a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, proposed a similar theory on subtle racism when he testified last year before President Clinton's Race Advisory Board. He calls it the invisibility of monoculturalism-an ethnocentric way of viewing the world. In America, many white people unconsciously operate from a monocultural perspective, he says.

'White Americans are operating in a context in which their cultural values are invisible to them,' he says. 'They define reality differently than people of color. But they are unable to see at a personal level that they are biased, that what they think and believe is oppressive.'

Monoculturalism is strongly evident in the workplace, Sue says. In a company that hired him as a consultant, he discovered that Asian-American middle managers rarely received promotions. He learned that the company's top executives preferred to

promote managers who were aggressive and highly visible, and stereotyped Asian-Americans as too passive and socially awkward.

In fact, with Sue's intervention, the company found that some Asian-American managers who were overlooked for promotions had actually been generating more profits than their white counterparts. They were just more modest and private about their achievements.

'I think the criteria for leadership were culturally biased,' Sue argues. 'In many Asian cultures, good leaders are those who work behind the scenes to get people to work together.'

Sue believes psychologists should devote more study to monoculturalism, so they can continue to show people in power how invisible forms of racism affect their judgments.

Martha Bernal, PhD, professor emeritus of psychology, Arizona State University, believes contemporary racism comes out in veiled ways. Rather than specifically complaining about the proliferation of Hispanics in this country, she says, whites instead decry illegal immigration and bilingual immersion programs in schools-racial prejudice masked as concerns about crime and education.

But the complaints about illegal immigrants are filled with stereotypic assumptions, such as the notion that Mexicans are bringing drugs into the country, she argues. Those generalizations result in random violence under the guise of law enforcement, she says.

'Each year there are increasing numbers of people who have been killed trying to cross the border near Mexico,' says Bernal, who studies ethnic-minority issues. 'And there seems to be a prevailing mentality that immigrants are bad, and that one should do everything possible to keep them out. As long as there's that excuse, it's okay to shoot.'

Bernal believes these widespread sentiments call for psychologists to expand their research on intergroup relations, something they've been applying to ethnic conflicts in other countries but will need to step up in the United States as the minority population soars.

John Dovidio, PhD, professor at Colgate University, has explored the evolution of prejudice from the pronounced bigotry of the pre-Civil Rights era to a modern phenomenon he calls 'aversive racism.' In that latter form of bias, whites feel mild fear or uneasiness toward another ethnic group rather than open hostility or disdain. Those feelings prompt them to avoid minorities rather than harass or scorn them, Dovidio says.

But for psychologists, it's much easier to help people overcome uneasiness than outright hatred.

'One of the nice things about this modern racism, if you can say anything nice about it, is that people truly want not to be prejudiced,' he says. 'If they can become aware of their biases, they can become motivated to change their behaviors.'

Joseph Trimble, PhD, of the psychology department of Western Washington University's Center for Cross Cultural Research, believes whites are using attacks on affirmative action as a backhanded way to express racial animosity. (Voters in California and Washington state recently opted to scale back state affirmative-action laws.)

'It's difficult for me to assume that these are done in the name of equity, that this isn't some sort of backlash,' he says. 'This was a way for white people to express their frustration, their opinions, without being confronted.'

Trimble, who studies American Indian populations, believes the indigenous people of this country still face some blatant institutionalized disrespect-such as the Washington, D.C., professional football team's refusal to drop the pejorative nickname, 'the Redskins.' But he also notices a tacit form of stereotyping today. People are trivializing or commercially exploiting American Indian culture, even though they appear to be honoring it, he says.

'In Russia, Germany and here in the states, there are American Indian clubs,' he says. 'They make Indian costumes and go on weekend camping trips, where they set up teepees and re-enact Indian ceremonies. It's viewed by some people on the reservations with a bit of humor, and to some degree flattery. But some of it is insulting. To take something that's an integral part of one's tradition and see it turned into something on a T-shirt is insulting.'

Trimble believes psychologists themselves need to continue becoming more multiculturally astute, so that they can then show other people the difference between honoring a culture and exploiting it.

Carol Gill, PhD, who studies disability issues at the University of Chicago at Illinois, says society subtly stigmatizes people with disabilities today by treating them-even in the most benevolent ways-as deficient. Many schools, offices and other public facilities think of providing wheelchair ramps, sign-language interpreters or books written in Braille as an act of charity or generosity, rather than a basic civil right, she says. Society has a deep-seeded dysfunctional relationship with people with disabilities, says Gill, who had polio and is now a quadriplegic. American culture has traditionally regarded disability as a problem with the individual, rather than a problem in the way society interacts with that individual, Gill says. Even psychologists, in their research and practice, have treated people with disabilities in that one-dimensional way, she says.

'In my training as a psychologist, when disability was mentioned in my coursework it was usually in tandem with words like abnormal or deficient,' she says. 'It was seen as contained within individuals. There was very little emphasis on how to fix the damaged dysfunctional relationship between society and the individual.'

Gill says she is encouraged by the fact that her professional area of research-disability studies-is an emerging academic field on par with women's studies or ethnic-minority studies. Rather than focus just on physical limitations, disability studies focuses on society's interaction with people with disabilities, she says. And she hopes it will show that people with disabilities have a unique cultural perspective to offer humanity.

'We live in a society that focuses on independence, autonomy,' she says. 'That's an environment that people with disabilities aren't going to live with very well. With us, needing help and being in cooperative relationships with each other is viewed as a good thing. We represent the need to develop connections with others.'

Florence Denmark, PhD, distinguished professor at Pace University, believes gender bias is operating at an obscure level much like racial bias. A leader in the development of the psychology of women as a scholarly field, she believes that covert sexism is particularly operative in schools. Educators implicitly assume that girls lack certain academic skills, particularly technological abilities, says Denmark, who was APA's fifth woman president in 1980. She questions whether girls are being cheated out of a vital curriculum because of these assumptions.

'When you go into a classroom, all the boys are busy on computers and the girls hang back,' she says. 'What we don't know is how much of that is socialization or lack of teacher attention, rather than innate ability.'

That trend may leave girls with a severe skill deficit in a world that will increasingly rely on technology.

'We're not really making sure that young girls are picking up these skills that will be so important,' she says. 'You almost get the idea that girls are trained only to be word processors, so that the computer becomes the typewriter of today.'

Denmark believes psychologists should study the difference in technological prowess of girls in same-sex schools, who aren't competing with boys for computer time, to see if their computer skills are higher than girls attending coed schools.

Gregory Herek, PhD, who as a research psychologist at the University of California, Davis, studies attitudes toward homosexuality, believes public acceptance of gay men, lesbians and bisexuals is growing.

But while a large segment of Americans condemns homophobic hate crimes, such as the recent fatal beating of a gay college student in Wyoming, many are still uncomfortable with the concept of same-sex marriages and other freedoms that gay men and lesbians consider their basic rights, he says. Even the most open-minded people can exhibit subtle prejudice toward gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, particularly at the organizational level, he notes.

'One way unconscious prejudice gets manifested in workplaces, especially in mid-level management, is that there's an assumption that a successful executive shows up at company gatherings with a spouse,' he says. 'And that's a situation where a lesbian or gay employee is being put in an awkward bind. They may have a very rich home life, but for them to show up at the company Christmas party with their spouse or partner can be perceived as making a political statement or flaunting their sexuality.

'The alternative is one doesn't go to the company Christmas party,' he adds, 'but then they risk being perceived as not being a team player.'

Psychologists, particularly those working in the industrial/organizational arena, can use their understanding of communication and interpersonal relationships to help companies negotiate these misunderstandings or conflicts between heterosexual and gay employees, Herek says.



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