Does Making a Racially Loaded Comment Make Someone a Racist?

I recently had an interesting interaction with a shop owner where he made a racially loaded comment when I entered his shop with a group of Indigenous youth. When he learned more about the group his attitude towards them changed to a more positive one. It got me thinking about the role heuristics play in our lives and how they can apply to the issue of racism. I have dissected the interaction below to the best of my ability in an attempt to examine how a race-based heuristic can be challenged without accusing the individual of being racist. Presenting someone with additional context and providing space for them to reflect- by suspending judgement- creates an opportunity for them to develop a more nuanced evaluation of a situation and update their race-based heuristic assumptions, whereby we can drop the charge of "racist" against them. On the other hand, they may hold onto their beliefs no matter what counter examples are put to them, whereby the charge stands.

I’ve changed some of the details in order to maintain anonymity of the people involved.

Over summer I did some volunteer work with a group of Indigenous youth on a school holiday program. Part of this involved raising money for a legacy item. The legacy item was to be something that could be used by and be of benefit to others in future programs. The youth had been learning the importance of taking care of the routine things in their lives, developing the related life-skills, and the importance of acts of service for others. A clothes dryer was chosen to be left behind as a legacy item because it fit in with what they had been learning about. The group decided they would prepare and sell healthy meals in the community to raise the funds to purchase one. Both elements (washing and cooking) fit with the theme of developing important routine life-skills. A clothes dryer would mean washing didn’t have to be hung-out inside (in-lieu of a washing line) where it was prone to becoming mouldy, and clothes could be folded and put away a lot sooner. This would help others in the future.

To execute our fundraising mission, we spent about seven hours across three sessions. The sessions included planning, preparing, and serving. A lot went into the sessions, and there were take home points about following recipes/procedures; maths for recipe quantities and working out the number of meals that would need to be sold to raise the funds; kitchen hygiene; customers service skills; and entrepreneurship to name a few. The fundraising target was met and when all was packed away, we triumphantly drove to the shops to purchase a clothes dryer.

As we entered, the greeting was a pretty cold. I said to the manager, John, that the group wanted to purchase a clothes dryer that they had fundraised for. The manager looked at them and asked, “These aren’t the ones who were here this morning, are they?” It turns out the store had been broken into during the early hours that morning. Petty crime is frequent in the town. He started talking about how many CCTV cameras were set up in store and how many fingerprints the police had gotten on the stolen (and later located) goods. I was taken aback that the youth with me had just done something positive in the service of others and now, they seemed to be casually judged by their race. However, I was conscious that he had just been through a burglary. However, when he went on to say “Oh, they can’t have been, the police already have them locked up”, my blood started to boil.

I hadn't met this person before, so I put his- and my- casual judgement to the side for the minute and pressed on as I wanted to follow through to completion what we had set out to do. I wanted it to continue to be a meaningful experience for the youth to the degree that that was possible, so I asked John if he would engage the group as customers to help them to make a decision on the model they wanted to purchase. He was a bit facetious in his response to the request, but obliged never-the-less as he instructed his business partner, David, to give a sales pitch to the group discussing the features of the different models that would lead into discussion about what the various price points were. I thought it was important that the group be able to make an informed decision, and experience what good customer service was like, so they had an opportunity to engage in it, and develop some communication skills around it.

The sales pitch started awkwardly and the group seemed distracted/disinterested but some gentle prodding had them tuning in and asking a few questions. We returned to the front counter where I went back to the beginning of the story about the legacy item because I thought it was important, and perhaps John had not properly comprehended the purpose of our purchase. I explained the whole story to him about how the group came to be in his store, starting from the planning of the legacy item fundraiser, including the take home lessons the group had engaged with. With absolute sincerity, his response was: “would you please tell David what you just told me?” There was now space for him to take in the entire story. John’s whole demeanor changed and he became more talkative with the group, loosened up with a few jokes, and soon after the transaction was complete, he offered to deliver the item free of charge when it was ready.

It would have been easy to have pass John off?as a racist at the beginning and self-righteously walk out taking our business elsewhere, but by holding greater space, a different outcome was possible. Put into perspective, this bloke was still reeling from the thousands of dollars of stock stolen from his shop, not to mention the hours of inconvenience cleaning up and reporting to police and insurance companies, the anger in the senselessness of the crime (a lot of the stock was destroyed and casually discarded nearby) and the uncertainty/anxiety that comes with such an intrusion of your private space. All of this was no doubt coming off the back of a sleepless night.

This individual has applied a prejudiced heuristic when interacting that day which was roughly: ‘indigenous youth = threat to my business therefore my livelihood’?. It is likely he arrived at that due to the frequent and visible crimes being committed in town by Indigenous youth, amplified by the fact that his business was actually burgled by Indigenous youth early that morning. It is a heuristic that serves to be self-protecting in the immediate term to avoid pain of this happening again. The application of a heuristic to avoid future pain is understandable- though doesn't necessarily make it effective. We want to avoid that which is painful. We as humans are wired to be more negatively affected by negative things that happen to us, than we are positively affected by something of an equally positive magnitude happening to us. e.g. We are more upset by losing $20 than we are excited by finding $20. So, we are more likely to apply a heuristic that brings us to a decision that aims- however shoddily- to prevent us from losing $20 again in the future.

If I murder someone, that makes me a murderer. If I lie however, does that make me a liar? While the heuristic described was prejudiced, it can’t be categorically said that this individual is racist without digging deeper into his stories and views. Perhaps he was, but the fact that he changed his mind with some added context, suggests otherwise. The end result in this example is literally the opposite of the definition of bigotry. What can be said is that the original viewpoint was certainly low resolution and ignorant of the parts of the story that would have given a more comprehensive picture. That is to say, that there are plenty of Indigenous youth out there leading positive lives, and the vast majority are not committing crimes- in fact most the crimes committed are committed by a small minority. All racism involves ignorance, but not all ignorance is racism. To add, at the hearing the words “Oh, they can’t have been, the police already have them locked up” I was quick to jump to my own heuristic assumption that it was said out of racism. It is possible that, had the culprits and customers both been of Asian or Caucasian descent that he might have said the same.

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A lot of people don’t have the time to consider their motives for thinking what they think. We are all leading busy lives as it is, and having a small crisis situation doesn’t make it easier to critically reflect on how we think about situations. As a society we can be very quick to label someone racist due to them making assumptions about certain groups of people. But as indicated in this situation, when more information is presented, a mind and attitude can be changed. This is demonstrated here by a change in demeanor after hearing a positive story and a willingness to do better/make amends by offering free delivery. My experience having worked in this space for years is that people want to hear and are often relieved to hear positive stories. This is not to say there aren’t people who would rather focus on the negative.

We all have heuristics of our own in our lives. We have to, the world is far too complicated to know everything about everything.?To give an example of somewhere else in our lives where this happens is during an election. Over 30% of people make up their votes on the spot (often based on seeing the familiar name from one of those candidate portrait signs) around 30% vote at random and about 15% do their due diligence to research what each party/candidate stands for and examine how it fits with their own values. Most people don’t have the time, nor the interest in getting to the bottom of things if the topic doesn’t grip them or relate directly to their lives. So, rightly or wrongly, the mental shortcuts offered by a heuristic gets applied to those topics that we don’t consciously focus on.

Just as a map of the territory is not the territory, heuristics aren’t reality as it is. They are a rough representation of reality based on lived experiences- limited and narrowly explored. So, if we want to challenge someone’s heuristics, we need to be prepared to dive deeper and have a nuanced conversation. Outright accusations of racism aimed at someone are unlikely to result in a shift in viewpoint. We need to be open to understanding how and/or why they arrived at a certain heuristic and be prepared with evidence that gives a more complete picture, and not prematurely judge them for having a heuristic viewpoint. We can also help to set up the preconditions for a nuanced discussion by applying the philosophy of assuming that someone’s actions/beliefs are situational, before assuming they are malicious.

You can’t pick up one end of the stick without picking up another. So, it is important to remember to extend the same courtesy at both ends of the stick. The heuristic process that casts an indigenous kid as a suspected criminal is the same process that labels a person as a racist because they have made a racially charged comment. There is ignorance in each of these viewpoints.

Perhaps this man has reflected on the interaction, perhaps he has gone back to casual prejudices with no lasting impact. I don't know this person well enough to make a judgement on whether he is a racist or not. I'm not ruling out either as I can't pretend to know his motivations and viewpoints without fleshing out further conversations with him. All I can say is that to confront him on his remark, to "call him out" is unlikely to have ended well. To help move a person beyond ignorance we can validate them as a person by acknowledging how their heuristics are arrived at then adding missing parts of the story (including the other side) to give a more complete picture. It is a "Yes. And" approach. Developing meaningful relationships with people across cultures, is a practical step towards reconciliation at a local level (which has the capacity to ripple?outwards), but you will likely need to spend enough time with each other to work through the existing heuristics on both sides.

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