Racism is a disease

I recently read an article that described racism as a disease and not a trait one possesses. The author argues that based on psychological research this is true because things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., are situational rather that permanent fixtures in our personalities. The tricky part of addressing racism as a disease is that we have to acknowledge that while it is curable for some, others may become sicker. Julie Irwin, the author, writes, “The best metaphor for the psychology of hate is not as a trait, like eye color, but as an epidemic.” Additionally, even though it is possible to cure some people of this illness, we have to acknowledge that it can always come back and they could be re-infected.

So how do we cure people? How do we vaccinate against this disease? The article argues that it is important to remember that people adopt the behavior that society tells them is okay. I think this is really key in understanding racism and the hateful rhetoric we’ve adopted. While the last few weeks have been crazy with the election and the resulting actions and hate crimes, it strikes me that this behavior is not as surprising as we think it is. We’ve built a society (especially recently with the election) that spews words of hate and promotes disunity among us. While this is terrible, we have to all acknowledge our participation in allowing this to become the societal norm. I’m not arguing that anyone in particular is to blame, but perhaps we should have been fighting harder a long time ago.

The article then goes on to say how important it is that we fight against this disease. Irwin says that in no way should we listen to the people that are arguing we all just accept what everything is and just wait and see what happens. She says this implies there is no hope, nothing to be done. Instead she says, “The plague can easily come and wipe all of us out; we have to protect against it with both defensive messaging (i.e., positive messaging about tolerance) and messaging on the offense (i.e., protesting intolerance).

            I think she’s right that we have to play both offense and defense, but it is still extremely scary because changing people is not a simple task. She notes that the disease will take control if we remain inactive and I think this is spot on. Submitting to any kind of hate gives it the power to win, so we must all continue to fight to dismantle any kind of hate—race driven or otherwise.