Upside Down, Inside Out and maybe Bass Ackwards
Posted: Monday, February 01, 2010
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
Recently, my husband and I caught an episode of a series on PBS titled "The Human Spark." A major portion of this one episode dealt with how it is becoming more and more apparent that certain attitudes are basically hard-wired into us. I've always believed that how we behave is a combination of "nature" and "nurture," but this episode challenged some of my more specific beliefs.
As a child growing up in Germany in the late 1950's there was a lot of politeness between people and respect and a lot was expected of you. The country was composed of basically all the same kind of people, some had different accents for different parts of the country, some were more educated. The only significant difference between people was the "class" difference. The ordinary person would look at someone like a doctor with awe. Or I would hear about a "rich" person. But basically it was a pretty homogenous group.
When we moved to the United States in southern California there were all kinds of people, some of different color, some of different nationalities like us and just much more variation than we saw in Germany . Since I grew up through age 8 in Germany there were no bigoted remarks at home because there were no "other" types of people to be bigoted about. I had no reason to feel differently toward other races or cultures because I was not taught to feel that way. On the other hand I was disliked by some students in the United States whose parents remembered World War Two and possibly participated in the conflict and whose parents told them I was a bad person. So as a result I would get insulted or pushed around or even hit. This experience caused me in the future to be even more tolerant of other types of culture and people of other skin color. This is possibly why today I embrace all kinds of philosophy from people who live on parts of this planet which I have never visited. I do have to thank my parents for their lack of bigotry and that they had no bigotry to pass on to me. I appreciated the different foods of my friends who where Hispanic. There is nothing like yummy food to make you appreciate others. Later on in my teens I appreciated the food of the Asian countries. A few years later yet I participated in Kung Fu and a lot of ceremonies and parades in Chinatown, which was amazing for a white kid.
The thing is that even at a very early age when I first moved to this country with my parents, I realized that the huge dose of perspective change I took in having to change from one society, German, to another society, the United States, made me aware even at that young age that people who have not traveled had a limited point of view. Seeing it on television is not the same as seeing it in person. Television does not give you the personal interaction with the people or the smells or the taste of the foods and the "isness" of it all.
In "The Human Spark" episode, one of the researchers was doing experiments with very young children. These tots could not yet speak, but could understand basic communication. They were just old enough to be able to reach for something that they wanted and take it into their hands. They were shown two puppets that were the same except for the color of their fur.
First they were given two things to eat and it was determined which they liked best cookie or vegetable. Mainly the kids liked the cookies best who wouldn't? Then one puppet, say the dark furred one, would "try" the cookie and like it. The dark furred puppet would then try the vegetable and not like it. Then the light furred puppet would sample each with the opposite result. The child was then offered both puppets to play with. Guess which puppet the child chose. You got it, the one that displayed the same preference that he/she did; the dark furred puppet. When queried, the researcher indicated that children chose the puppet with the same preference 100% of the time. It seems we are hard-wired to like those who like what we like; those who are the "same" as we are.
Similar research was done with very small children regarding helpfulness. The little ones chose 100% of the time to play with anything (in this case it was just colored geometric shapes) that was helpful and shunned anything that was not.
So I got to wondering about early exposure to peoples and cultures that are not those of our birth parents. In America , we pride ourselves on being the melting pot of the world. We like to look at ourselves as being better for living together as we do. And yet, despite Government's attempts at legislating it away, we still have bigotry and prejudice based on race and religion, and much more.Why is that? I don't necessarily think that it is innate. I do think that we learn it very early; so early that we as individuals really have no say in the matter.
In my husband's experience, he grew up without prejudice because he was never confronted with people of other races. He wasn't "forced" to form opinions of others based on race. His parents did not have prejudices either, having been born in and spending all of their early lives in Germany with other German nationals.
So perhaps we have it backwards. Maybe exposing all our youth to many races early in their development causes them to make associations (some of them negative) without the ability to first give it serious thought. You see your dad make a bad face while talking about a black man or your grandmother never has anything nice to say about Mexican nationals and you just take it in by osmosis. If those people were not around for your parents and grandparents to disparage, maybe you wouldn't learn to do that as well. I have to wonder. But our United States is the way that it is and it is not going to change as far as racial mixture is concerned. Nor do I think it should. But here is the thing. I've always thought of myself as rational and reasonable and not at all prejudiced. Yet, when I took one of those tests recently that time your responses, apparently I chose the associations of black people and weapons a little faster and more easily than I chose that association for white people. The end result was that I associate black people with violence. I was shocked. I grew up with Hispanics. My first crush in first grade was on Richard Alvarez (my grandmother had a cow). My first experience with a black person was just one of curiosity about their skin. I wanted to touch him, my mother was appalled. So how could I have tested out that way? How do we raise our little ones without passing on our biases about race and religion and gender and all the rest? I don't know, but I think that is something that we need to figure out.
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Top-level comments on this article: (7 total)I think parents are doing a much better job of accepting other mores and nationalties than my generation. My loving parents never seemed to be prejudice against anyone.Hi Anon.That's wonderful. And thank you for reading and commenting.Dianne
What a wonderful, thought provoking article, Dianne. I do think we are taught to be prejudiced, whether it is subtle or not. How do we learn to stop this? I surely don't have the answer to that. I also think 'society' and the media contribute to this teaching, consciously or not..Hi Joyce.I think you are right about that last comment. It's a sly and insidious business and we pick up ideas and biases without even noticing ... even as rational adults.Thanks for reading and commenting.Yours,Dianne
Most of us are influenced by prejudice from the cradle.This prejudice is reinforced when we enter school, then again when we enter the workforce.It's difficult not to be prejudiced to some degree when we're bombarded by it from all sides our whole life. I think it's something we have to use our own minds to get around- to figure out for ourselves as individuals how we are going to think about different people. People who do not think for themselves, usually end up following the crowd, in this and everything else. Your article was both interesting and thought provoking. And, I think, very well written. Thank you for writing it. -- Always- EllaHi Ella.You are so right. But as I mentioned about that test I took, even though I can think my way around prejudices, I still apparently have ingrained biases of which I am unaware. I imagine we all do.Thank you for your comments.Dianne
Great article Dianne. You said; "I don't know, but I think that is something that we need to figure out". Prejudice of course comes from shallow insight but you can't really figure that out. You have to have a deep insight regarding it. If you are doing concentration meditation, you are sharpening your knife, but it is vipassana meditation that cuts through. You need both. In vipassana meditation you begin to study the body and mind, then the insight that arises from the combination of concentration meditation and insight meditation will cut throught the delusions fo the human body, and racial prejudice will fall quickly by the wayside, replaced by a natural equanimity. If you can get your email address to me, I will attach an audio - guided meditation that you will find interesting.
Metta............eHi e.I think prejudice comes from not questioning the things you think you know. But I get your point about shallow insight. Without keen insight, you can't see well enough that something even needs to be questioned in the first place. I'm saying this badly. It's not very well-formed in my mind yet.Anyway, I sent you my e-mail address. My hubby will also be interested. He has taken up chanting recently and has found a lot of comfort in it.Hugs,Dianne
hi dianne,i loved the mixture of your husband's thoughts as well as your own.i was always for the underdog-part of a characteristic of my sign of cancer, so even though i grew up in a home who had some prejudices, i never leaned that way. it honestly doesn't matter what color or nationality a person is. i am more concerned in honesty and decency.this was a great article,thanks for sharing,my best to you,sueHi Sue.I too think that honesty and decency are far more important than race or religion or the rest. But unfortunately for me, I grew up in a very bigoted household. Bernd just said to me that I should tell you that he still thinks mean people suck. Apparently that is a bumper sticker. And I have to agree. There is never any excuse for meanness. We both have this prejudice. But it is based on behavior, not how a person looks or what faith they are.Thanks for sharing your thoughts as well,Hugs,DianneHi Dianne,I have been a Searchwarp reader since 2007 and enjoy your articles very much.My parents were active in desegregation of our school system in the 60's & 70's. I am labeled "white", whatever that means, and we grew up in a white bread suburb of Philadelphia, so we were exposed to all races and nationalities. My 3rd grade crush was on Ezra Richards who happened to be black, but noone said a thing to me about that. Through television and life experiences I have been exposed to certain stereotypes and though I will admit to laughing at any number of ethnic jokes, I am accutely aware of the implication. I try to be politically correct but more importantly, I would be horrified at the thought that I may have hurt someone's feelings, because I was raised to be considerate and open to ethnic differences.I also agree with your husband that mean people suck. Unfortunately, it is difficult online to tell the "meanies" from the decent people, because the meanies never come right out and tell you what awful things they have just done off-line! They also often portray themselves as victims, so it is up to us as readers to enjoy the content, while remembering Walter Cronkite's famous quote," In seeking truth, you have to get both sides of a story"!Have a wonderful day!Hi Elizabeth.Firstly, thank you for saying that you enjoy my articles. It means a lot to me. Basically, I write for myself, but it's the sharing that gives it real meaning and to hear that someone enjoys m writing is always a treasure.It's frequently difficult to tell the "meanies" from others even in real-life relationships. And it really doesn't matter to me until I am treated badly by someone. Until then, I treat the "meanie" just as I treat everyone else ... or at least try to (I'm not perfect by any means) ... with decency and respect.I've been exposed to a lot of different races throughout my life as you have. And I hold my philosophy about life and prejudice very close to my heart, but there is still that disturbing result of that test I took. I wish that like you, I had been "raised to be considerate and open to ethnic differences."Thank you for reading and commenting.Dianne
No question about it...being raised in the south we were terribly influenced by the old school of thought and times have certainly changed. Thank you for the time you put into sharing your thoughts.Hi Rebecca.I grew up in Southern California, but my parents were old-school mid-Westerners. I can't imagine what growing up in the South would have been like.Thanks for reading and commenting.Dianne
Dianne,I really enjoyed this perspective from you and Bernd. Like your husband, I grew up in an all-white area with parents who seemed to have absolutely no color consciousness. As a teen, I went off to summer camps and routinely made and brought home friends from other races and socio-economic levels and my parents never batted an eye. Then one day, my cousin told me that her mother (my aunt) would never allow "those people" to spend the night in her house. I was shocked. It was the first of many shocks I received from my white friends who began to let me know in subtle ways that what went on at my house was not the norm and was really quite odd. I thank God on a regular basis for parents who told me that underneath the skin, all people were created the same. They not only told me that, they lived it. I consider it one of the greatest legacies they gave me. I have done my darndest to pass it on to my children!Hi Jean.When I dragged that poor little Richard Alvarez home with me on the first day of first grade, I wasn't thinking that anything my parents or Grandmother said about other races applied to me. Grandma was shocked and so were my parents and they made their displeasure at my choice quite evident. There was also concern for his parents and their worry when he didn't arrive home when he should have. My parents weren't ogres after all. But still, it hurt and I didn't understand.Having grown up the way you did, I actually can imagine the shock of your first experience of prejudice. Bernd has spoken many times of being on the other end of prejudice and how it baffled him. Only once in my white life have I been on the other end and it was not pleasant. I was an assistant manager in a clothing shop that employed black, Hispanic and Middle Eastern women. The one black woman was so militantly black that she was sure that I hated her for her color without any proof of it. She made my stint there (I was the only white person) quite miserable. She blamed my disapproval of her consistent tardiness, calling in sick, and lack of productivity on my reaction to her skin color. She was always sweet with Luz (Mexican National), the store manager, even though she was the one who actually wrote her up for all her infractions. Oh well, I should let that go, shouldn't I!As I've said in other comments, I think that you are lucky to have grown up in a family that did not have prejudices. Boy, I really wish we could do away with that crap!Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to add your thoughts to this.Respectfully,Dianne
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