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The Significance of Affirmative Action for the Souls of White Folk: Further Implications of a Helping Model
Journal of Social Issues, Winter, 1999 by Anthony R. Pratkanis, Marlene E. Turner
Promote empathy. Empathy or feeling someone else's emotions makes it difficult to treat that person with cruelty and increases the likelihood of democratic altruism (see Stephan & Finlay, this issue, for a discussion of the benefits and limitations of empathy as a prejudice reducer). Batson (1991) describes a program for teaching empathy that includes (a) making salient the needs of others and how others experience this need, (b) encouraging the adoption of perspective taking (through inductive discipline and other techniques), and (c) teaching how to respond to needs in an effective manner. Again, the U.S. Army provides leadership on how to promote positive intergroup relations. In its training sessions for leaders, the Army requires role playing: Whites see situations from the standpoint of Blacks and Blacks see situations from the standpoint of Whites (Moskos & Butler, 1996).
Such role play can provide participants with a range of new information and help them empathize with others (Pratkanis, 2000).
Recognize the worth of each person. One factor that leads to racism is a threat to self that questions the worth of an individual. Recently, Fein and Spencer (1997, Study 1) showed that merely giving a person the opportunity to affirm the essential aspects of her or his self was enough to reduce the use of negative stereotypes. In a world where winning is everything, it is unrealistic to expect that there won't be losers who will need to somehow find an excuse for failure. This is especially true if losers' self-esteem is overinflated and not built on true competencies. However, that does not mean that steps cannot be taken to prevent this from happening, such as (a) providing coping skills and positive ways to resolve attacks on the self and (b) valuing and developing the competencies of all persons so that they feel of worth and not excluded from society.
Teach democratic relationships. It is clear that a commitment to democratic (versus autocratic) principles is important for increasing democratic altruism. How can this be achieved? One way is to teach an understanding of democracy directly. It is important that our schools, mass media, and other educational institutions teach the basic machinery of democracy (checks and balances, deliberative persuasion, respect for minority rights) and why each of these components is important. In addition, it is important, as Pratkanis and Turner (1996a) argue, to equip citizens with the interpersonal skills (e.g., persuasion and group participation skills) needed to feel self-efficacious in a democratic setting (see also Pratkanis, in press, for a discussion of mass-mediated democracy). However, for democratic altruism to flourish, it is essential that citizens see relationships as egalitarian and equal as opposed to autocratic and hierarchical (Altemeyer, 1988, 1998). The goal of life is to live with one another, not to dominate one's neighbor into submission. As the work of Hoffman (1984) has shown, empathy and an appreciation for democratic relations can be fostered by inductive child rearing (see Shure, 1994, for additional ideas on how to accomplish this goal).
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