How Your Brain Looks at Race

Obama has assumed additional identities beyond party affiliation—or, as scientists put it, offered voters novel ways to show he is one of them. "He's run a campaign that is defined by a certain generational change, and a certain change in operation," says Kuwata. "That's what's allowed him to bring so many people together." In a general election against John McCain, he can also forge an identity as the out-of-Iraq and increase-taxes-on-the-rich candidate, the change candidate, or any number of issues that signal to large blocs of voters that he is on their side.

Which is not to say there are no "over my dead body" voters—those who would vote for an African-American or biracial candidate only on the day after hell froze over. Their ranks, however, are smaller than they were in 1982, when large numbers of white voters who expressed support for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley's gubernatorial run in pre-election polls couldn't bring themselves to pull the lever for him on Election Day. Bradley lost. The phenomenon is still known as "the Bradley effect." "It's foolish for anyone to assume these conditions have disappeared," says political consultant Paul Maslin of the Bradley effect. "There may still be people who are taken with the romantic notion of Obama's historic candidacy, but then are reminded of his race, and change their mind." Still, says Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, "I don't think they're a large component of the Democratic Party. And in a general election, they probably wouldn't vote for [Obama] anyway, regardless of race."

Lest this seem Pollyannaish, let's note that racism isn't dead. Because America remains at least partly segregated, the mental module that classifies people—by noticing who are your neighbors, colleagues, fellow students or others "like you"—picks up skin color as one relevant marker. Harold Ford Jr. of Tennessee got a cruel reminder of that in 2006. After five terms in Congress, he lost his bid for the Senate, an election many expected him to win. In the closing days of the campaign, Republicans ran an ad in which a young white actress describes meeting Ford "at the Playboy party," and, smirking, asks "Harold" to "call me." Although Ford was also hurt by an uncle's criminal indictment, the come-hither ad cost him votes.

Many whites who profess to be race-blind unconsciously associate dark skin with negative traits and ideas (evil, failure, dangerous), and light skin with positive ones (joy, love, peace), shows an assessment called the Implicit Association Test. When white Americans see photos flashed so quickly that they can be detected only subliminally, the amygdala, which signals "Watch out!," is significantly more active in response to black than white faces. If the photos appeared long enough to be processed consciously, however, the amygdala quieted down and the rational, thoughtful prefrontal cortex perked up. You could practically hear the cortex telling the amygdala to pipe down and stop being a racist jerk.

There is another way to quiet the amygdala's response to people it decides are not like you and therefore threatening. Reminiscent of the basketball-jersey experiment, scientists find that if volunteers are told they are on the "tigers team" or the "leopards team," the brain regroups: the amygdala gets upset when it sees a member of the other team, regardless of his skin color, but not members of its own team, again regardless of skin color. "That's why I'm optimistic that people can overcome racism," says psychologist William Cunningham of the Ohio State University, who led the tiger/leopard study. "You can build a larger 'we,' as when we assigned people to teams. If we can start recategorizing ourselves and seeing the similarities [across standard racial lines], we can mitigate or even override the original prejudice. That means racism is neither intractable nor inevitable." The trick for Obama will be to keep building that "we."

With Daniel Stone

© 2008