Whites lack empathy for minorities

Human brain recognizes and reacts to race, UTSC researchers discover

By April KemickThe human brain fires differently when dealing with people outside of one’s own race, according to new research out of the University of Toronto Scarborough.

This research, conducted by social neuroscientists at U of T Scarborough, explored the sensitivity of the “mirror-neuron-system” to race and ethnicity. The researchers had study participants view a series of videos while hooked up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines. The participants–all white–watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen.

“Previous research shows people are less likely to feel connected to people outside their own ethnic groups, and we wanted to know why,” says Gutsell. “What we found is that there is a basic difference in the way peoples’ brains react to those from other ethnic backgrounds. Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less motor-cortex activity than observing a person of one’s own race. In other words, people were less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people”

The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.
White people lack empathy for brown people, brain research showsNew research from the University of Toronto-Scarborough shows that white people’s mirror-neuron-system fires much less, if at all, when they watch people of colour performing motor tasks, and I’m not at all surprised. For years, I just assumed that this was true, and that someone just had to do a study to prove it.

After the United States invaded Iraq and massacred tens of thousands of Iraqis, worldwide terrorist recruitment skyrocketed, as well as terrorist attacks targetting the U.S. and coalition countries. Terrorist leaders cited the Iraq invasion and the deaths of Iraqis as the reason for the attacks. However, White Americans did not buy it, believing it to be a smokescreen for some other reason. It must be Islam, they reasoned, as they grasped at straws.

I then realized that the vast majority of White Americans could not empathize with brown people at a very basic level. For most White Americans, the death and violence of thousands of brown bodies was just part of some abstract ethical argument to position oneself as morally superior to the United States. For most White Americans, brown people dying just meant flickers on the television screen about something happening far away. They didn’t feel the overwhelming anger and sadness they would normally feel when someone they know dies without reason. They couldn’t see the full reality of what death means, when the people who die are brown.

I have seen white people complain online that they cannot see the facial expressions of (East) Asian faces. For many white people, East Asians are like emotionless robots who are efficient at machine-like things like number crunching. Some white people argue that while East Asians may be able to play musical instruments beautifully, they play music without soul.

Most white people just don’t see us as humans. When brown people die through violence, or East Asians express joy or sadness through our faces, most white people’s brains just don’t register the human connection between our bodies and their bodies. When we watch movies and TV shows and read books featuring white protagonists, we have to put ourselves into white people’s shoes to understand the stories and feel the emotions of sadness, laughter, and pride. But people of colour are rarely the protagonists in the media that white people watch, so they rarely or never have to imagine themselves as us.The hearts of white people: the science

By abagondGutsell and Inzlicht also measured the white students on the Symbolic Racism Scale. The more racist a student the less he reacted to what he saw people of colour do--though it did not affect how he reacted to whites.

Gutsell and Inzlicht think that mirror neurons are part of what empathy is built on. Meaning that whites are cold-hearted when they look at people of colour. Not as something wired into their brains from birth but as something learned.

Are whites that cold-hearted when it comes to people of colour? There are plenty of other studies that show it. It also helps to make sense of things like police brutality, the Missing White Woman Syndrome and how blacks receive worse health care than whites regardless of wealth. Katrina also springs to mind–-among other things.

But there is another possible reason besides cold-heartedness which has yet to be ruled out: white people simply pay less attention to people of colour–-not out of heartlessness but simply because they regard them as less important.An important comment from someone named Urbia:

Brain Research: White People Lack Empathy for Brown PeopleI think it's important to regularly point out that racism isn't just to harbour hate, resentment, or something equally negative against another race. It's also the absence of empathy, compassion, or something positive towards another race that one would have toward their own race. So many times, I hear/read white people prefacing racist statements with, 'I'm not racist, I don't hate ______ people...' and then they say something that lacks empathy with brown people, minimalizes the experiences of brown people, or justifies a system that oppresses brown people.

It's the latter thing, this lack of empathy, that upholds institutional racism. It's linked to the complacency that accepts the status quo and resists change with the attitude that if something's not broken, it doesn't need fixing. Lack of empathy prevents white people from seeing how broken a system is for brown people.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Majority of Americans Are Racist and Understanding Implicit Bias.