Is Auroville a post-racial society?

“Your data suggest a strong automatic preference for White People compared to Black People.” The words screamed at me from my computer screen. Stunned, I immediately started looking up research that might show that the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which I had just taken, lacked reliability and validity. Anything to confirm my belief that I was without bias, at least when it came to skin colour.

Although the IAT is widely used in social psychology research, some scholars have indeed raised questions about the test and pointed out that our behaviour and attitudes in real-world contexts are very different from responses during laboratory experiments. But the question still is deeply troubling: are we subject to biases and prejudices that we are unaware of?

Implicit bias

Here is where the idea of implicit bias comes in. This is a cognitive bias where we attribute a specific quality to all members of a particular social group. The quality could be positive or negative, and the social group could be defined by one of many different factors, such as ethnicity, skin colour, shape of the eyes or gender. So, saying that the “Swiss are punctual” is as biased as saying that “girls are number-challenged.” (Fun fact: Swiss International Air Lines is not ranked among the top-20 airlines with the best on-time performance; the top spot goes to airBaltic, a Latvian airline.)

Implicit bias is only one among a bunch of cognitive biases that affect our thinking about people who we perceive as different from us. The other well-researched biases include: the outgroup homogeneity effect (where we perceive members of an out-group to be more similar to one another than members of our own in-group); the group-attribution error (a belief that a characteristic of a member of a group reflects the character of the group as a whole); and the cross-race effect (being able to recognise own-race faces more easily than other-race faces).

Added to this is our evolutionary history, through which our brains have evolved to respond extremely quickly to differences between “us” and “them.” Infants are able to learn the faces of same-race people better than other-race people. Children as young as three automatically group people by race and gender, consider “thems” in more negative terms, and perceive the faces of other-race people as angrier than same-race faces. By the time these children grow up to be about ten, cultural associations are added to the mix – they soon learn that some feelings and thoughts about “thems” are expressed only at home, not in public.

The roots of racism

The combination of these biases can easily lead to prejudice, discrimination or injustice. Is it even possible to get rid of these deeply ingrained cognitive habits? In an address to the Auroville community in 2007, Doudou Diene, a former member of the Auroville International Advisory Council, nicely summarised the challenge: “… all manifestations of racism have a long history and are the result of social, cultural, political, religious and philosophical processes. Racism has very deep roots. Not only is it deep, it is also universal. All communities, nations, wear cultural glasses; they all look at other communities through lenses tinted by prejudice.”

Most scholars agree that the roots of racism lie in colonialism. The “scientific” ideas about race that some people are biologically superior to others – were used to morally justify the slave trade and the mass atrocity crimes of European settlers in Africa, the Americas and Asia. Skin colour became a convenient marker for race.

Although racism as we understand it today is a relatively modern phenomenon, perhaps starting in 17th century Europe, discrimination based on colour is a much older idea. Let me stick my neck out and talk about references to colour in our earliest text, the Rig Veda. Colour is not the most important differentiator between the aryas and the dasas and dasyus – that would be religion. The non-aryas are variously referred to as a-_yajvana_ (not sacrificing),_ a-vrata_ (not religious),_ a-vrdhya_ (without blessing) and_ a-devayu_ (godless).

But colour shows up as the second most common way to differentiate between the superior aryas and the inferior dasas and dasyus in the Rig Veda. There are at least three references to dark-skinned dasyus who are vanquished by Soma and Indra. If we don’t look for specific mention of skin (tvac), but look only for references to the “dark ones,” there are many more references to the dark colour of non-aryans. For example, in one verse the poet invokes Indra, who “drove away the dark ones [krsnaasedhat]” and “killed the dasas [ahandasah]”. In another, the poet invokes Agni and says, “from fear of you the dark tribes went in all directions, abandoning their possessions.”

Even a society as culturally evolved as the Japanese is not immune to prejudice based on skin colour. As recently as in 1993, a public bathhouse (onsen) in Otaru put up a multilingual sign on its front door saying, “Japanese Only.” In traditional Japanese entertainment, the heroes are always fair-skinned, who battle hairy and swarthy barbarians. In popular culture, darker skin tones are associated with villainy. Also, Japan is one of the largest markets for skin-lightening creams.

Settlers and natives

Where does Auroville fit into all of this? Clearly, we are subject to the same biases and biology as everyone else. But in overcoming racism, there is one aspect of Auroville which is an additional disadvantage. In many ways, Auroville is like a settler colony. People have come in from different parts of the world, and from all across India, to settle in a place that has a native population. Without exception, settler colonies have always experienced race-based conflict. Settlers typically perceive themselves as superior, and discrimination against the native population is pervasive. Sometimes, this conflict can lead to extreme forms of racial injustice, such as in South Africa or Australia.

When we think of settler colonies, the image that comes to mind is white Europeans settling in an area with traditionally darker people. But this is not always the case – settlers are sometimes people from the same country with very little difference in external appearance. There are examples of settler colonies in Afghanistan and Vietnam, where one ethnic group has settled in another’s land. Closer home, the Bengali settlers of Tripura are a good example. Before 1946, the indigenous tribes of Tripura made up more than 50% of the population. In 30 years, this reduced to 30%, with Bengalis from East Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, settling in millions. The settlers came to dominate the culture and imposed their language and customs. Even today, there continues to be widespread discrimination against the tribal population by the majority Bengalis.

We need to talk about racism

At a recent meeting on the topic of discrimination in Auroville, there was great reluctance to talk about racism. Many of the participants felt that the term “racism” is too strong – it brings up images of genocide, lynching, and apartheid, and does not apply to Auroville. Perhaps this comes from a partial understanding of the term. Racism is separate from its effects of discrimination or injustice. Racism merely means that one racial group, a culturally constructed set of people based on appearance or ethnicity, consider themselves to be biologically or culturally superior to another racial group. Very often, this notion of superiority leads to racial domination.

The term race was originally used to mean ethnicity or nationality. When Europeans started encountering a wide range of “other people” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, race took on a more biological meaning. Enlightenment scientists and philosophers made race a natural system of categorising the human species. And with the expansion of colonialism and slavery, these “others” were racialised as non-whites and exploited. Few people today subscribe to this idea of race. We now know that race is not a biological category and is a pure cultural invention. Of course, this does not mean that racism has gone away – it continues to have tremendous power in structuring social relationships.

Traditional scholarship on racism was focused on overtly racist attitudes and policies. In the mid-twentieth century, racism was considered to be a historic relic, which would inevitably fade with time. Modern educated society, based on humanistic philosophies, was meant to transcend such barbaric beliefs and attitudes. Unfortunately, racism survives in much more subtle ways.

Therefore, contemporary studies of racism look at the diffuse ways in which racism leads to racial inequality. No longer is it mostly about hate, violence or segregation (although examples of such forms of racism continue to exist). It is much more about unconscious and systemic forms of racism that perpetuate racial inequality.

If racism is not as brutal as it used to be, at least in so-called civilized societies, why is it such a big deal? Why go on and on about it? Because, as one neuroscientist put it, the “countless pinpricks of microaggression … produce oceans of pain.” Recent research shows that racism is a source of chronic stress. This means that the person at the receiving end of everyday racial discrimination experiences frequent negative stimuli and feels helpless to cope with this perception of threat. Everyday life is impacted by these mundane experiences of racism. These are the experiences that are least resolved and most pervasive. Ultimately, the greatest burden of chronic stress is produced by the routine experiences with racism.

Chronic stress changes the way the brain functions. In fact, it changes the very structure of the brain. As we constantly employ the stress response, the neural pathways connecting the amygdala (the seat of fear), the prefrontal cortex (which regulates social behaviour) and the hippocampus (which regulates emotions) become hyperactive. The result is that we become hypervigilant, constantly looking for threats to fight or flee.

What can we do?

So, is Auroville a post-racial society that is free from discrimination and prejudice? Given the evolutionary and cultural history of humans, it’s unlikely that any society is post-racial. But what can we do about racism and its effects? For many people, the reflexive answer is effective education, especially in the arts and humanities. However, there is little evidence that liberal education works. Neil Postman once remarked that, when people tell him about using arts education to reduce prejudice, he “invariably think[s] of the Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich and the ideological head of the Nazi Party, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who at the age of 24 received his Ph.D. in Romantic Drama at the University of Heidelberg.”

It is also true that most parents who are interested in preventing racism have very little idea about how to do it. They are uncomfortable discussing race with their children and instead resort to meaningless abstractions, such as “we should be friendly with everyone.” Also, overt forms of racism can be addressed through dialog and cross-cultural understanding, but not the subtle and diffuse form of racism that pervades modern society. How can we talk about unconscious biases when we are, by definition, unaware of them?

The core problem appears to be that of generalisation. Whenever we use language that generalises the characteristics of a particular group, even non-racial groups, we reinforce the idea of racism. Even positive generalisations, such as “Germans are efficient” or “women are nurturing,” are counterproductive. They cement the notion in young minds that everyone in a group shares the same qualities, whether positive or negative. And it’s easy to see how that can lead to statements like “Indians are dirty” or “Muslims are cruel.” In other words, we must individuate, always. Instead of saying “East Asians don’t participate in community processes,” we need to say, “I don’t remember seeing so-and so in any general meeting.” Rather than saying, “Tamilians have no sense of time,” say “so-and-so showed up late for the meeting.” Make it specific. Individuate, individuate, individuate.

Perhaps it’s appropriate to close with Doudou Diene’s advice to us: “… working on diversity does not mean working on the entire cosmos. The first step is to work on the way you interact with and empower the local inhabitants. This is the ‘cleaning of one’s bowl’, the modest task that each of you can practise every day. It’s not easy, but it’s indispensable.”