Written by Andrè Mifsud
On May 25th 2020, the death of African-American George Floyd critically raised these questions, as the whole world stood in shock at the footage of the unarmed Floyd being pinned to the ground by a white police officer in Minnesota kneeling on his neck; actions which resulted in Floyd’s death.
Of course, albeit quite a famous one, this was not the only case where people of different ethnicity were discriminated against solely on the basis of skin colour. Human beings seem to be automatically biased towards members of the same race. Even in face recognition, Meissner and Brigham investigate an own race-bias in which memory is better for recognising faces of a same-race rather than faces of a different ethnicity – possibly resulting in a loss of personalisation.
This does not justify discrimination on any basis whatsoever. But a key to addressing this inhumane behaviour is to investigate the psychological processes behind such action. So, the question here is: why does racism take place in our societies? Not to justify it, but to raise awareness. Fortunately, social psychology – that is, the study of how interpersonal relationships affect behaviour – attempts to explain this.
The Social Identity Theory
Racism, rather than a product of two individuals interacting as two individuals, is the cause of two individuals interacting as group members. This is in line with the social identity theory, characterized by Tajfel and Turner’s distinction between an ingroup and an outgroup, the “us” versus “them”.
Categorisation is essential for everyday life. It helps us distinguish social groups and classify the environment as per those categories. It helps us distinguish a cat from a dog, a baker from a butcher. However, the problems start when an individual identifies with a particular social category and begins comparing the ingroup with other existent outgroups. Thus, the social identity theory is merely a theory of group differentiation – how an ingroup can assert its differences from the rest – and this is usually done by exaggerating differences between two somewhat similar groups, as tends to happen in racism.
Per the social identity theory, a group of white people are more likely to focus on evident differences such as colour, whilst ignoring underlying similarities, such as that, regardless of colour, both groups are human: we eat, we sleep, we drink, we feel happy and scared, we love, we live – all groups share a number of characteristics that unite, rather than divide. But ingroup biases lead to white people preferring whites over blacks, maintaining self-esteem by prejudicing, hating and downgrading the other ethnicity. So, there is a surprisingly personal motive behind racism; it goes beyond politics, economy or even principles. It is possibly a way of elevating self-esteem and falsely perceiving security.
The Standard Prison Experiment in relation to George Floyd
Additionally, the case of George Floyd reminds us of another classic experiment from the field of social psychology: Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. In the classic experiment, college students were requited and divided into two groups: either guards or prisoners. They were all placed together in an artificial prison setting, with their only instruction being that order must be maintained.
Conditions were replicated as in real-life: participants were given respective uniforms; “guards” were armed, and “prisoners” were numbered rather than called by name. Although participants from both groups knew that the prison they were in was a fake one, in trying to maintain order the guards resorted to several harsh measures such as giving physical punishments, push-ups and stripping down prisoners, as well as verbally manipulating prisoners and turning them against each other. The attitude of the guards became aggressive to the extreme, especially when considering the guards knew the prisoners were merely participants too.
Zimbardo’s experiment was not directly related to racism; however, his replication of a prison setting sheds light on how social power corrupts and how authorities can unconsciously become unnecessarily aggressive. It revealed that situational factors can precede over personal ones; meaning that regardless of how much of a good person you are deemed to be, social power can lead to deterioration of character.
So, does this mean that racism could be related to social power?
Although Zimbardo’s experiment cannot be relied on as much due to notable breaches of ethics, a number of parallels can be drawn between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the death of George Floyd. Just like Zimbardo’s guards seemed to forget the fact that the setting of the experiment was not real and that participants could leave any time they liked – thus posing no real threat – the case of Floyd also shows how law officials may sometimes lose touch with reality and the actual threats posed by the people they are interacting with, resulting in extreme behaviour.
Just like one of the students participating as a prisoner in Zimbardo’s experiment had an emotional breakdown, the damage in Floyd’s case was fatal – due to extreme measures taken by the police officer in exerting power on an unarmed African American who did not resist arrest. It is essential, however, that we do not fall into the pitfall of viewing our current national situation as qualitatively different from Floyd’s in Minnesota. Lassana Cisse Souleymane’s murder in Ħal Far back in 2019 is stark proof of how these phenomena are still present in our societies, more than would be deemed ideal.
In essence, the aim of this article is definitely not to justify or defend any racist behaviour. On the contrary, the belief that an unemphatic society can lead to detrimental repercussions was proven by Floyd’s and Souleymane’s racist murders, as well as all racist murders that have gone unmentioned in the past. Only through awareness of these psychological processes can we hope to one day overcome this way of thinking and create an ambience in which everyone is valued on his own merit, rather than solely race.
As psychology students, we promote mental health. We promote empathy.
