Neuroscience of Racism — How Storytelling Might Help

Let me start with the end: we need to be featuring more BIPOC protagonists in our stories.

Now, you might be thinking, “Ok Amina, tell me something I don’t know.”

I’ll admit, the statement above is incomplete: we need to do a lot more than that. But as storytellers, we’re trained to see others’ perspectives. We’re practiced in presenting arguments in a way that opens people’s minds. We have a great opportunity to shape the next narrative for society, and provide a launchpad for meaningful discourse and action. But, as with all storytelling, it starts with understanding our target audience, and how their brains work.

According to neuroscientist, Dr. Larry Sherman, racism is rooted in some neurological pathways responsible for a person’s sense of safety. He explains that prejudice is rooted in fear, but fear itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, fear has developed as an adaptation for survival in pretty much all animals. But like anything else, fear can get out of hand. 

Terrified of spiders? If you’re in Australia where pretty much every organism is out to get you, then yeah, maybe your terror is well founded. Here in North America? That cute, eight-legged critter dangling from your bedside lamp is not only harmless, she might even be helping keep the house free of fruit flies. Still freaked out? Do her skinny little legs give you the willies? Maybe you’re prejudiced. Go with me on this one…

About a hundred years ago, a study was conducted on a human baby (likely without parental consent or ethics review). Researchers introduced this emotionally stable child, Little Albert, to a white rabbit. In the beginning, Albert showed no fear. If anything, he exhibited some curiosity.

Reminiscent of Pavlov and his classically conditioned dogs, these researchers would strike a steel bar with a hammer each time Albert touched the rabbit. Perhaps not surprisingly, Albert reacted by crying and showing fear.

After repeatedly pairing the sight of the rabbit with the scary noise, the researchers eventually presented Little Albert with only the rabbit. Now, instead of reacting with curiosity as he originally had, he would get very distressed. Having associated the fear of the noise with the rabbit, he had now become fearful of the rabbit itself. A once neutral, even intriguing creature had become a perceived threat to Albert. Is it a stretch to say that Albert had been trained to be prejudiced?

What’s even crazier is that Little Albert seemed to generalize this fear: he became distressed at the sight of several other furry critters, such as a rat, a dog, and even a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls in the beard. What does this mean for our own biases? If we don’t like one “type” of person, does that make us predisposed to automatically dislike other, “similar” groups?

Brain structures, facial recognition, and fear

Without going too much into the weeds, there are several brain structures involved in facial recognition, including the fusiform gyrus. In two interesting studies (1) (2), white people were shown images of other white faces. Unsurprisingly, fMRI scans showed distinct activation of the fusiform gyrus. But what was really enlightening was that when white subjects were shown images of black faces, there was delayed activation of that area. But they also found that there was increased activation of the amygdala. You may recall that the amygdala is largely responsible for emotional responses including fear. 

In other words, when white people were shown images of black faces, not only was processing slower, areas of the brain responsible for fear regulation were activated. However, and this is where things get really interesting, when those subjects were shown images of famous black faces, there was no increase in activity in the amygdala. Familiarity seemed to reduce the fear response.

So what does this mean exactly?

Well first, I’m happy to report that we are not born prejudiced. There have been studies done on this too, and newborn infants don’t demonstrate a preference for faces from any particular ethnic group. It’s only after about three months that infants start to show a preference for faces from their own ethnic group — probably just because of what’s familiar to them (i.e. what their parents look like). 

What this means is that we learn this stuff, and one of the ways we do that is through the mere exposure effect. We feel better about something when we’ve seen it a few times. It’s why billboards are still a thing. You’re not really going to buy that snazzy new laundry detergent because you saw an ad for it once. But when you’re at the grocery store and you’ve got cleaning supplies on the list, you’re more likely to reach for the brand that (even subconsciously) feels more familiar. And if you’ve passed by it a thousand times on your commute to work, chances are one brand is going to feel, somehow magically, better than the others. Advertising FTW.

Ok, so if we learn preference and prejudice, can we un-learn it? And what the heck does storytelling have anything to do with it?

Can fear conditioning be reversed through storytelling?

Unfortunately, Little Albert didn’t get to go through any reversal exercises, but if he had, they could have taken shape in a few different ways. First, the researchers could stop clanking the steel bar when he saw the rabbit, and with time, he’d learn that the rabbit was harmless. To speed up the process, one might even pair the rabbit stimulus with something positive like a cookie, leading Albert to eventually welcome the rabbit’s presence. These are common strategies psychologists use to treat phobias today.

“But Amina,” you say, “my name isn’t Albert, people aren’t rabbits, and I don’t particularly like cookies.”

You got me there. But in our society, we’ve been conditioned to adopt implicit biases, like it or not (I don’t like it, and I have to accept that I absolutely have some myself, if I am to change for the better). These biases may be about innocuous things such as friendly spiders or imperative things like matters of race and equality. In some ways, we are all Little Albert to an extent.

And for the sake of clarity, let me emphasize that the “implicit” part of implicit bias means we may not realize we even hold them. They might not ever show up explicitly unless we’re stuck into an fMRI machine. For those people we more readily label as “prejudiced,” we see those biases manifest explicitly, and I believe we urgently need ways to effectively reverse both types.

Enter: familiarity and storytelling.

The argument that people of color should be better represented in various contexts isn’t new (not to mention women, LGBTQIA+ folx, and all sorts of other minorities). The rationale is that, for example, when a girl sees a female director leading an Emmy Award winning film production company, she may be more likely to pursue big dreams. Or when a young man sees someone of his ethnicity reach great heights, he may feel more empowered to do the same. Representation and role models are important.

But we can take it a step further. The more we all are exposed to people of color as protagonists striving for and achieving big things, the more this narrative will begin to feel familiar to society as a whole. These faces will feel familiar. And familiarity feels good. We typically don’t stay prejudiced against things that feel good. Not for long, anyway.

We need to be featuring more BIPOC protagonists in our stories. Even better, we need to be raising up BIPOC storytellers.

PS: In the coming weeks, I’ll be following up on this article with insights on how to portray such protagonists in ways that don’t, inadvertently, do more harm than good. This is an area I hope to grow in as a person, and affect greater change, so if you have any feedback for me, I’d love to hear from you. I am not an expert here and I can’t speak to the experience of racism, so if you have thoughts and ideas I want to listen! Email me here!