Racism and Cognitive Dissonance

We are in the age where racism is so finely stitched into the fabric of society, that its very existence is denied by many. A common, seemingly innocuous, statement is “I don’t see colour”. In grudging acknowledgement of the disproportionate and deadly impact of law enforcement on Black people, some have called for “colour-blind solutions” like better training or legal remedies. In her Medium article Why we Keep Denying Racism, Martina Petkova made an interesting observation: “When you’re so preoccupied with reputation and with how ‘they’re making it look’ or ‘making it sound,’ then you’re working very hard to not see something that is very much in front of you.” This denial of racism is not only seen in America. I have encountered it in every white majority country that I have visited.

I often wonder why this denial is so common. In many cases, the denial is accompanied with extreme hostility, as though the very contemplation of the existence of racism were a personal assault on the humanity of the dominant group. I find this strange, because the system and practice of racism itself is an assault on the humanity of every Black person. Do they really believe what they are saying? Can’t they see the obvious? Are they just trying to be cruelly disingenuous? Black people have been, and continue to be, on the receiving end of great injustice. It has always been accompanied with denial (“nothing to see here…just people being people…”). If you’re on the receiving end of oppression, you cannot be deceived, placated or mollified by people telling you that your daily painful and life-threatening experiences are imagined.

The barbaric injustice of systemic racism strongly contradicts the image of civilisation and altruism that Europeans and their descendants have carefully cultivated. The extended holocaust of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is seen as the ultimate manifestation of racism. However, we also need to question the whole morality of colonialism. How did an exercise that started as mutually beneficial trade between European explorers and vibrant African civilisations suddenly turn to invasion and slaughter? And how did invasion turn to industrial scale mass enslavement the like of which had never before been seen on earth?

Let’s briefly explore the role of colonialism as a foundation for racism. Contrary to the popular narrative, the first European colonisers did not leave their shores to seek a better life by settling and working in a new land. The intention was to conquer and exploit. In Africa, Asia and the Americas, all of the colonial powers sought riches by finding new sources of mineral and agricultural treasure and forcing the indigenous people to work the land to provide that treasure for export to Europe. In the process, they created enduring systems of oppression that would safeguard the exploitation for centuries. These invasions had a strong and enduring negative impact on the social and economic development of all the civilisations who encountered the colonialists. A number of African countries were still under European colonial rule in the 1980s.

All across Africa, new coloniser-friendly administrative structures were set up. Advanced weapons were introduced. An unquenchable thirst for slaves created bloody inter-ethnic wars, where before there was relative stability.

In Namibia, the colonising Germans perpetrated the first genocides of the 20th century. They set up their first concentration camps in a grim foreshadowing of future WWII atrocities. Between 1904 and 1908, they massacred hundreds of thousands of the native Ovaherero, Nama and San people, with many dying of disease, starvation and exhaustion in German concentration camps on Namibian soil.

In Congo, the Belgian king Leopold II presided over the murder of over 10 million Congolese natives through inhumane labour practices in the pursuit of exploiting Congo’s precious rubber resources. Limbs and heads of innocent Congolese were routinely severed by the Belgian invaders. Neither the Belgian monarchy nor the Belgian state has apologised for the atrocities to date.

In the Americas, almost the entire native population was systematically, deliberately and ruthlessly wiped out by the invading Spanish, British, Portuguese, French and Dutch colonisers.

Even now, the political and economic imbalances in these territories serve as a reminder of the brutal legacy of colonialism and the slave trade. When Europeans first set out to conquer and plunder, many of them insisted that their real goal was to spread the gospel of Christianity. They wanted to ‘civilise the heathen’. Their perception of themselves as a group even today is that of civilised, altruistic intrinsically good people. The need to actively promote this narrative, and to require that other people in the world believe it, appears to have grown in modern times. Foreign aid and elaborate lending programs are zealously rolled out as though the world spontaneously emerged as a desperately unequal place, and the former colonial powers are sincerely interested in fixing that mysterious injustice.

In parallel, persistent stereotypes have been created to mischaracterise the oppressed people of the world. The development of negative stereotypes is one of the steps toward dehumanisation. Dehumanisation is the denial of human attributes in a selected group, leading to diminished empathy toward it based on the belief that its members have a different experience of humanity. Historical examples are often found in the context of genocide or attempted genocide. The Nazis were convinced not only that Jews were the source of many of Germany’s economic problems, but that they were also sub-human. Tutsis in Rwanda referred to their Hutu neighbours as cockroaches, as they slaughtered almost a million of them over 4 months in 1994. Violent jihadists justify acts of terrorism against infidels, and massacre thousands on this premise. Racists often characterise people of African descent as apes. The tension between white and black communities and countries persists partially because of the implications of this mischaracterisation. These racial stereotypes help people who are in the advantaged position to deal with their own moral failures.

The history of atrocities committed over hundreds of years conflicts with the view of the civilised, altruistic Christian European. Because of this conflict, a situation of cognitive dissonance arises on a societal scale. Cognitive dissonance refers to a situation where an attitude or belief does not align with a behaviour. A common example is the case where a smoker knows that smoking is a leading cause of cancer yet continues to smoke anyway without making any effort to quit. In this case, the Europeans and their descendants around the world recognise that invasion, mass murder, enslavement and selfish exploitation are not characteristics of civilised, altruistic people. However, they still firmly embrace the illusion of civilised altruism.

In order to make the illusion true, they must either make restitution for lives destroyed and land and property looted and restore stability in the nations they have disrupted, or they must create an alternative narrative that absolves them of all blame in the murder and exploitation of countless millions around the world. This is one of the origins of ethnic stereotypes and dehumanisation. If the indigenous Africans, Asians, Native Americans or Aborigines are less than human, or can’t experience human desires and emotions the way Europeans do, or are naturally inferior humans who need external support to develop properly, then all the invasions, genocides, exploitations and abuse are not only justified, but necessary to ‘improve the lot’ of the hapless oppressed people. Problem solved.

There are 3 recognised ways that people use to deal with cognitive dissonance:

1. Reducing the value of dissonant conflicting beliefs. This would mean rationalising that the oppressive immoral behaviour is not really oppressive or immoral because it is necessary. As discussed above, this is the root cause of dehumanisation and stereotyping of people of African descent and other oppressed groups.
2. Acquiring new consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant ones, thereby creating a more favourable balance. This would mean rationalising that the good European domination has done far outweighs any negative consequences. Like the first case, this has also been eagerly adopted. It works hand in hand with dehumanisation and stereotyping. It may also be one of the reasons that there is such an abundance of foreign aid missions to clean up the messes that they have made by setting up institutions, governments and structures that actively oppose development.
3. Changing the dissonant belief or behaviour to achieve consistency. This would need Europeans and their descendants to reject their self-perception of civilised altruism and embrace a new image that aligns more closely with historical truth. Otherwise, they need to consistently change the behaviour of historical exploitation to align more with their aspired and projected image of civilised altruism. Nobody is fooled by the current self-deception.

Shown in this context, it is not surprising that certain politicians and segments of society are so virulently opposed to teaching history objectively. Banning and burning books, protesting at school boards, intimidating opponents and attempting to destroy safe spaces for open discussion all show how painful it must be to look in the mirror for some people. Welcome to mirror-breaking season. But that doesn’t change reality.