My favourite popular science blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science, has just posted a summary of some very interesting research by Italian scientist Alessio Avenanti. His findings show that when watching a short video of a needle piercing a hand, the level of empathic response in the viewer (the brain activates neurons in the same place in the viewer’s hand which can be measured for sensitivity) depends on whether the skin colour of the hand is the same as that of the viewer.

Using white and black Italian subjects, he found that an empathic response was only found when the hand was of the same race as the viewer. Previous studies with similar findings have been used to argue that we simply respond to that which is familiar to us, however Avenanti disproved this by repeating the experiment using hands that were bright violet in colour, unlike any familiar skin tone, and found that both black and white responded empathically to the unfamiliar purple hand being pierced.

In other words, the racist, unempathic response is a learned behaviour, and our automatic response is empathic, or, we are born colour-blind but become socialized to view those of different hues as less than human and therefore not worthy of our care and concern – even at an unconcious, neurological level!

This highlights the importance of tackling racial prejudice at a very early age. Break the cycle before the neural pathways become set or we are doomed to transmit prejudice down through the generations.

Political liberation for the parents and then neural liberation for the children!