
Today, we see that neuroscience is associated with all kinds of concepts. Every theme, every title, every concept can be associated with neuroscience in some point, where it is possible to create a connection between brain functioning. Although racism and neuroscience seem to be distant topics, advancing technology and neuroimaging systems show that this judgment is not so accurate.
What does the “racist brain” tell us?
For more than 50 years, social psychologists have been trying to understand the origin of prejudice in all its forms, including racial bias. For many years, philosophers and other researchers who have conducted studies on racism in general tended to ignore the arguments made by the psychology community on the grounds that they were “inadequate and individual-based.” Recently, with the development of neuroscience and neuroscience devices, “racism” has become a topic that is focused on social and historical reasons, as well as a topic that is discussed and discussed with personality structures and brain function. In parallel with these advances, social psychologists turned their attention to implicit aspects of racial cognition. Social psychologists who had the opportunity to benefit from neuroscience focused on the phenomenon called “same racial advantage”.
The determination and analysis of the recompense of racial biased behaviors in the brain seems to be useful in understanding how this biased attitude occurs and reducing the potential for this bias. At this point, neuroscience provides us with help “to understand whether a person has racial biases.” In a study examining “implicit bias tasks,” participants in the experiment were asked to classify the words on the computer screen as positive and negative. Before words appear on screen, facial pictures of people with black or white skin to colors flash in a very short time. The study found that if the face disappeared quickly before the word appeared on screen, participants were faster at classifying negative words if they were black and classifying positive words if they were white. Moreover, based on these findings, it is estimated that racial bias rates in people of white skin color and Asians in the process of information processing and perception of the social world are more than 75%. However, the question of whether these “implicit” approaches lead to racist attitudes and behaviors seem to be the product of a more intricate inter-brain interaction than the one mentioned.
What are these neural networks under racism?
As a component of the limbic system in our brain, the “amygdala” plays a role in the functioning of autonomous functions as well as the control of our emotions, threat perception, fear, excitement and learning processes. Brain imaging studies show that in people exhibiting “implicit bias”, the amygdala has a black skin color and has a more intense electrical response to faces of different races. In cases where the person feels threatened, anxious and uncomfortable, the amygdala reacts similarly. Fortunately, the intense amygdala response in people who “function the brain healthy” is assisted by the brain area responsible for executive and executive tasks called the “prefrontal cortex”. This brain area supports rationally assessing the triggering of fear and anxiety and calming this system, which works automatically. Likewise, through our brain areas such as the “dorsolateral prefrontal cortex” and “anterior singulat cortex”, the brain provides cognitive control by suppressing inappropriate behavior and biases.
It seems that while people whose brains work healthy can control their biases, people who do not work healthy cannot eliminate the resulting fear fluctuations and biases. The deprivation that occurs in the cognitive mechanisms that provide this control results in the formation of negative attitudes and behaviors in people. For example, a study found a correlation between impaired prefrontal lobe function and fundamentalism. Studies have also shown that amphetamine and alcohol addiction patients have similar brain damage and problems regulating emotions.
However, other studies show us that discrimination can be caused by indirect biases, so that well-meaning people can discriminate without knowing and making mistakes unconsciously. Studies, the resulting correlation, are not enough to understand a whole causality, but they help us to analyze racism, which is a social problem. One of the most spectacular features of our brain is “plasticity”, which has the ability to compensate and repair losses in functions. The brain is an organ that can reorganize and regulate itself. Thanks to our implicit biases, strict beliefs, actively functioning amygdala and passive-functioning prefrontal cortex plasticity, it can create new synaptic connections and enable us to be open to new knowledge and experiences.
By doing cognitive exercises and with the goal of increasing our awareness level, we can rebuild our brains, control of our motivations. We can rebuild ourselves.

References:
– Sosyal Nörobilim – Oğuz Tanrıdağ
– Zhong W., Cristofori I., Bulbulia J., Krueger F., Grafman J. (2017). Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism. Neuropsychologia, 100 ,18-25.
– Goldstein, R. Z., & Volkow, N. D. (2011). Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex in addiction: neuroimaging findings and clinical implications. Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 12(11), 652–669.
– https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mind-in-the-machine/201809/understanding-the-racist-brain