Comments

1. LaSmartOne wrote:

   The social *is* biological. Why the psychological impact of ongoing racial inequality cannot be denied forever. Purse snatching, condescension and routinized subordination are not daily indignities that can just be “brushed off”, no matter how much you understand it intellectually. This nation must truly go through the healing process of reparations in order to reassert itself as a world leader and model nation.

   Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 12:36 pm ¶

2. Torontonian wrote:

   @LaSmartOne:

   Or rather, the social is as real as the biological, because people are social animals and live in society.

   Posted 10 Jun 2008 at 6:51 pm ¶

3. LaSmartOne wrote:

   Torontonian, I was quoting Graves. For example, scientists have shown that loneliness and social isolation can change the genetic expression patterns of a person, the effects of a person’s social environment on the very core of his body being that deep. The new wave of research is epigenetics, where a person’s environment can affect long-term protein expression profile on the cellular level.

   We, as human beings, are social animals. When you are constantly reinforced as mentally, physically, socially and culturally superior, naturally you will have a positive self-concept and the pattern of hormonal, neurological and genetic expressions all sustain themselves as as organisms dominant over their environment. Such is the result of being white in a still white supremist society, your right to being and your claim on society and the history of Civilization is a given and so you begin from a psychology that reinforces an intellect that seeks to build on, maintain and assert appropriate and positive control, ie take the reigns, of that society or environment. This is the purpose of propaganda, even if people intellectually recognize propaganda for what it is or intellectually agree with it or not, propaganda, or advertising, still guides people’s biological behavior.

   Blacks, however, still operate largely within a negative social environment where they are asked to prove their worthiness to the larger society and, as a whole, are not recognized as or as having been positive contributors to society or Civilization. When you are constantly dismissed, or subject to routine harrassment, condescension or subordination, you may intellectually understand that most people operate with the “white racial frame”, but it still effects you to the core of your being. For example, a study recently featured in the May issue of Psychological Science demonstrates that being put in a low-power role may impair a person’s basic cognitive functioning or, specificially, the executive functions which are responsible for planning, rational thought, etc. The Harvard IAT test shows that most people still have automatic, negative psychological associations with black faces, names or concepts associated with black culture. And a recent study out of Stanford demonstrated that many young whites still have automatic associations between blacks and apes, suggesting that discrimination is still linked to dehumanization.

   In a toxic, dehumanizing social millieu such as this, it’s a wonder black people are still alive let alone functioning. But it still affects us to the core of our beings and any “genetic” differences between the races may just be epigenetic or psychosomatic. Ongoing racial inequality resulting from centuries of legalized dehumanization and discrimination that is often dismissed or ignored by the larger culture, in addition to the daily psychological stings from a larger culture that still, in many respects, regard you as less than fully human, is still physically painful and psychologically damaging.

   Posted 11 Jun 2008 at 5:41 am ¶