The Goodes and Eddies of unconscious racism

Imagine it is you walking on the field under the gaze of some 40,000 or so spectators, and you hear a young girl's voice shouting the word 'ape' at you. What would you do? Your options come down to ignoring what you heard, or pointing out what happened and becoming the centre of the nation's attention and risking harm to a 13 year old girl and/or being ridiculed for making a big issue out of a silly comment by her.

In that moment, on the Melbourne Collingwood sports grounds, Adam Goodes, made the right call.

Some may want to frame this as an over-reaction to a kid's stupid remark. It wasn't. Goodes' reaction highlights that human deficiencies, left to their own devices, create harms that cut deep. Goodes did not stand up only for his own humanity, he stood up for his parents, his brothers, sisters, their children. Nobody deserves to be degraded by people who look different and who somehow feel that they are superior because of their skin color. If we turn a blind eye to such abuse, we accept that groups that are different from "our own group" are in fact less than us. As a consequence we should then also accept that our children should be degraded by other groups. None of us want that. This understanding forms the basis of civilisation. Therefore it is imperative that we stand up against racism in all it forms.

Goodes stood up for all of human diversity. He stood up for our kids to be treated with the respect that every human deserves and to not be degraded because of their looks or any particular characteristic they may have.

Goodes could have inflamed a sensitive issue, but clearly he has a deep understanding of the roots of racism as well as having great empathy. He emphasizes to the community at large to not demonise the 13 year old girl who racially abused him: "she is just an innocent kid". At 13 a kid is not aware of the effects of the things they do, certainly not, if what she does is accepted within her day-to-day environment. Would she have said what she said if her parents did not condone such behaviour in their daily conversations? If her friends did not behave in similar ways? The fact that it was a 13 year old girl to make the racial slur accentuates that racism lives in innocent minds.

Are her parents to blame for her ignorance? To a certain extent they are. Adults are expected to be consciously aware of the fact that they would not like to be treated in this way themselves and therefore they are expected to instil that attitude in their children. But blaming the parents is easier than understanding them. Blaming the parents does not resolve anything. If we want to move towards a better world we need to understand why are her parents and friends are not acting in sync with a civilised society.

The answer is that our first impressions can determine how we look at the world for the rest of our lives if we are not guided/educated to become consciously aware of how we think and if we haven't learned to correct mistakes in our thinking.

Unfortunately how we think, how we can improve our thinking, the role of emotions on our thinking are not subjects in our educational curriculae.

The parents of the girl may well have 'inherited' racist impressions from their parents at a time when racism was the default way of thinking. These first impressions have then been cultivated through selective socialising (we prefer to socialise with people who are more 'like us') and a limited education has prevented psychological self-discovery.

Not so long ago white people saw themselves as the superior race. Arguably the whole concept of race is a fictitious construct, as from a genetic perspective differences between individuals from the 'same race' can be larger than the genetic differences between 'races'. As 'white' Europeans happened to become the group that owns most of the world's wealth in the 20^th Century, they saw this as confirmation and/or justification of their belief in racial superiority. Today those of white European descent are hoping that the Chinese will not make the same mistake.

Globalisation and education (largely due to witnessing multiple genocides) has made people aware that the idea of a superior race is a fallacy. And yet, a 13 year old Australian girl can feel that it is ok to call a man an ape because of his skin colour.

Clearly globalisation and education has left pockets of racism untouched. Or did it leave a much broader under-current of racism?

Enter Eddy McGuire, president of Collingwood, well-known broadcaster and host of Australia's Who wants to be a millionaire. Mr McGuire is generally regarded as anti-racist. In line with what we'd expect from him and someone in his role of president of the host-venue, he went up to Mr Goodes after the incident and apologised in name of the Collingwood club.

A few days later, Mr McGuire during a live radio interview, volunteers that "Goodesie should promote King Kong the musical", and when the radio-host asked him what he meant Mr McGuire went on to explain that this would be a great promotional idea and laughed at his own 'joke'.

The next day Mr McGuire apologised and he turned and twisted to find the right words.

He could have made it easier on himself and made a much stronger point if he acknowledged that he was indeed a racist. Consider the following hypothetical acknowledgement.

McGuire: "The reason I feel so bad about this, is that I have discovered that I am a racist. Only someone who is a racist would say something like that. I don't want to be a racist. I do everything I can to integrate white Australia with aboriginal Australia. White Australia has done harm to the indigenous population and as a minimum we are all obligated to show our fellow Australians the respect that everyone deserves. I am stunned to discover that despite all my good intentions, on a subconscious level I am a racist. This comes as a shock to me. I apologize to Mr Goodes and everyone who I have hurt with my remarks. I will submit myself to therapy to find out why I said what I said and how I can become the person I want to be."

Should Mr McGuire be vilified for being racist? Is he a hypocrite?

I would argue that he should not be vilified and that he is not a hypocrite.

From an evolutionary perspective we are wired to be tribal. This means that we are diffident of people that look/behave differently from our own tribe. Globalisation is, from an evolutionary perspective, much too recent for our brains and emotions to have adjusted to. It takes time for our brains and emotions to overcome the hard-wired prejudices against those who look different from us. At a conscious level we work on taming our hard-wired prejudices, but it will take time for the sub-conscious to adapt to this new reality.. After all, this fear of strangers has helped our tribes to survive throughout the eons.

Recognising that we are subconsciously racist makes us aware. Awareness is the first step towards consciously changing our brains and emotions. Assuming that we are not bigoted because we don't want to be perceived as such, because it is politically incorrect, and on the whole we appear not to be acting based on prejudices, doesn't mean that we are not prejudiced and that we do not covertly act in a prejudiced manner. The subconsciously prejudiced recruiter can unwillingly harm employer and candidate by dismissing the best candidate for a job, based on completely irrelevant criteria. On a large scale this harms society as a whole.

It requires constant vigilance of how we feel, think and act. Discovering that we are less perfect than we'd like to think of ourselves can be confronting as Mr McGuire has found out.

Racism is not an Australian issue. Although each nation/culture embeds racism in its own way, racism is a bias that is common to all humans and exists in all nations and cultures. If we want to progress as a species and start to improve the world for next generations than we would do well to look inside ourselves and become aware of the nasty heuristics that direct our thinking and behaviour.

How many of us question the 'truths' that we are fed by our parents, religions and schools? How can we improve if the fundamental 'truths' by which we perceive the word are the truths of others and not our own?

We can only improve on our weaknesses if we have the courage to look for them and if we have the motivation and endurance to change.

There is a test called The Implicit Association Test (IAT) that measures bias on different subjects such as race, gender, sexual orientation and other. You can take this test yourself at implicit.harvard.edu.

Maybe you and I are not so different from a 13 year old girl and Eddy McGuire.

Thanks Mr Goodes for showing us that although we think of ourselves as civilised, we still have our work cut out for us.