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ABSTRACT
This essay explores the connections between fear, implicit bias, and injustice, noting how the brain’s deeply embedded structures and processes for survival predispose us to detect threat. It further illustrates how the brain’s categorization processes collude with bias to favor ‘in-group’ members and ‘other’ ‘out-group’ members. Taken together, these factors limit the brain’s mirror neural network’s capacities to empathize across lines of difference. While this sounds reductionistic and pessimistic, the good news is that, just like the brain is generally malleable, implicit biases can be modified through debiasing practices. In exploring these concepts, the essay examines the contributions from intercultural and postcolonial pastoral and practical theology to provide constructive frameworks for facing one another, enhancing recognition, and developing neighbor-love.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 There are striking parallels between the discourse of today and the world that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. responded to in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail in 1963.
2 Of course, the struggle for equality and equal rights predates the 1950s and 60s; however, the organization into a sociopolitical movement in the U.S. is marked here by historians.
3 I was there as part of a task force in my denomination. We worked, both locally and nationally, on diversity and equity initiatives.
4 The site of a bombing that killed four girls aged 11–14 (Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair).
5 I was part of the ‘cult of silence,’ which Danjuma Gwandoya Gibson names in his article, “Mentalizing the Classroom: Pedagogies toward Making the Other Matter in Social Activism and Public Theology.”
6 In using this term, I am echoing what pastoral theologian, Danjuma Gwandoya Gibson names in pointing out how certain conversations tend to be ignored in the seminary classroom: ‘Conversations that are typically excluded, trivialized, or delegitimized commonly include human experiences at the margins: people and groups that have been otherized and forced to exist on the underside of modernity,’ Gibson, “Mentalizing the Classroom: Pedagogies toward Making the Other Matter in Social Activism and Public Theology,” 134.
7 For his critique on Eurocentric Christian thought, see De La Torre, “Embracing the Hopelessness of Those Seeking Pastoral Care.”
8 Staats et al., “State of the Science,” 10.
9 Khan, Race on the Brain.
10 Ross, Proven Strategies for Addressing Unconscious Bias in the Workplace.
11 Eberhardt, Biased, 24.
12 Eberhardt, Biased.
13 Ibid., 25.
14 Ibid., 26.
15 Cook in Scott, “Confronting Implicit Bias.”
16 Nosek and Riskind, “Policy Implications of Implicit Social Cognition.”
17 Ibid., 38.
18 Amodio, “The Neuroscience of Prejudice and Stereotyping,” 675.
19 Ibid., 670.
20 Ibid.
21 Beeghly and Madva, An Introduction to Implicit Bias.
22 Dunham, Baron, and Banaji, “The Development of Implicit Intergroup Cognition;” Beeghly and Madva, An Introduction to Implicit Bias.
23 Beeghly and Madva, An Introduction to Implicit Bias, 3–4.
24 Ibid.
25 Beeghly and Madva, An Introduction to Implicit Bias, 1. Beeghly and Madva give examples such as racial segregation in housing, and discriminatory policies in policing, education, and healthcare.
26 DiAngelo, White Fragility.
27 Ibid., 8.
28 The physical signs of fragility are physiologically measurable: heart rates increase, blood vessels constrict, muscles and bodies tense as if threatened.
29 DiAngelo, White Fragility, 8.
30 Jones and Jade Norwood, “Aggressive Encounters and White Fragility.”
31 Ibid.
32 This phrase is from Joseph LeDoux, used to describe the amygdala’s role in the fear/stress response in the brain.
33 Howard, The Owner’s Manual for the Brain.
34 Dunbar, “Evolutionary Basis of the Social Brain;” Molenberghs, “The Neuroscience of In-group Bias.”
35 Molenberghs, “The Neuroscience of In-group Bias,” 1530.
36 Ibid., 1535.
37 Bingaman, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care.
38 Gazzaniga, Human, 123.
39 Eberhardt, Biased, 266.
40 Technically, there are two mirror neural networks: (1) the ‘strictly congruent’ which activates and fires when the action/activity is specific, such as when the other reaches for an item, and (2) the ‘broadly congruent’ network which fires when the activity/experience is more broad or abstract, such as in emotional contagion or empathy. See Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain.
41 Dapretto et al., “Understanding Emotions in Others:.”
42 Eberhardt, Biased.
43 Ibid., 285.
44 Madva in Moody, “Implicit Biases: The Undercurrent of Social Injustices with Dr. Madva.”
45 Devine, “Stereotypes and Prejudice.”
46 Banaji and Greenwald, Blindspot.
47 Staats et al., “State of the Science.”
48 Adapted from Staats, “State of the Science;” Staats et al., “State of the Science.”
49 A question that I am reframing based on the collaborative work of Lee Butler and K. Samuel Lee in article, “Changing the Margins: Mentoring and research in the 21st Century.”
50 Dunham, Baron, Banaji, “The Development of Implicit Intergroup Cognition.”
51 Ho, “Face, Social Expectations, and Conflict Avoidance;” Ho, “On the Concept of Face;” Hu, “The Chinese Concepts of ‘Face;’” Augsburger, Conflict Mediation Across Cultures; Domenici and Littlejohn, Facework.
52 Adapted from Domenici and Littlejohn, Facework.
53 Lartey, “Postcolonizing Pastoral Theology,” 80.
54 Lartey reminds us that ‘diversity is God’s norm’ in Lartey, Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World.
55 Lartey, Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World, 116.
56 Lartey, Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World; “Postcolonizing Pastoral Theology,” 95.
57 Cohen, Face to Face with Levinas, 24.
58 Critchley, “Introduction,” 6.
59 Orange, The Suffering Stranger, 46.
60 Levinas, Time and the Other, 87.
61 Orange, The Suffering Stranger. Lartey argues that Levinas’ philosophy revolved around a central theme: ‘a concern that western philosophy has consistently practiced a suppression of the Other,’ Lartey, Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World, 130. That the Other must remain truly Other and mystery to the Self. Lartey asks his own central question, ‘How can I relate critically, crucially, and responsibly with Others in a way that respects and preserves their authenticity as Other?’ Lartey, Pastoral Theology in an Intercultural World, 134.
62 Levinas, Time and the Other.
63 Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition.”
64 Balaton-Chrimes and Stead, “Recognition, Power, and Coloniality.” Taylor’s theory is not without criticism. In fact, Balaton-Chrimes and Stead illustrate the various scholars that resist the ‘Hegelian’ model of Taylor and offer postcolonial alternatives that ‘draw out alternative indigenous intersubjectivities that may not need or want recognition from the Other … or engage the Other with a weary but attentive attitude,’ Balaton-Chrimes and Stead, “Recognition, Power, and Coloniality,” 14.
65 Balaton-Chrimes and Stead, “Recognition, Power, and Coloniality.”
66 Ramsay, “Resisting Asymmetries of Power;” Ramsay, Pastoral Theology and Care.
67 McGarrah Sharp, Misunderstanding Stories.
68 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks.
69 Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
70 McGarrah Sharp, Misunderstanding Stories, 152.
71 Ibid., 134.
72 As in ‘mirroring’ in self-psychology. See Sheppard, Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology.
73 Sheppard, “Womanist Pastoral Theology and Black Women’s Experience of Gender, Religion, and Sexuality.”
74 Intersectionality is a theoretical orientation of the ‘insurgent knowing’ women of color, particularly African American women, have used to point out the complexity of multilayered oppressions. See Ramsay, “Resisting Asymmetries of Power.” Scholars credit legal scholar, Kimberle Crenshaw with naming the ways black women were overlooked by both racist and sexist policies and bias, and the consequences of this invisibility. See Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.”
75 Sheppard echoes earlier calls for models of Womanist pastoral and practical theology that attend to particularity, such as Watkins Ali, “A Womanist Search for Sources;” Boyd, “Womanist-Feminist Alliances;” Snorton, “Self-Care for the African American Woman.”
76 Roozeboom, Neuroplasticity, Performativity, and Clergy Wellness.
77 Siegel, Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology, 23–2.
78 These processes have been connected to the socio-emotional capacity of empathy. See Hogue, “Brain Matters.”
79 Ramsay, “Resisting Asymmetries of Power,” 89.
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William D. Roozeboom
Dr. William D. Roozeboom is an Affiliate Assistant Professor of Practical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and an Adjunct Assistant Professor Practical Theology and Pastoral Care at Loyola Marymount University. He also teaches periodically at his former institution, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, and serves as a theological content advisor on the school's, “Science for Seminaries: Neuroscience Education for Theology Training” project with the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Dialogue on Science, Religion, and Ethics (AAAS/DoSER). Additionally, he serves as the Executive Director at the Avery Centre Counseling Services where he oversees and provides neurotherapy, along with pastoral counseling services.