MAYA WILEY TEACHING LAWRENCE O'DONNELL

Last night on the +Lawrence O’Donnell show, The Last Word (MSNBC) something important happened. +Maya Wiley, who is rapidly becoming my favorite TV personality, was one of the guests. She tried very hard to teach Lawrence something about racism, in fact to teach a principle of life; why we are the way we are. I saw her on July 14^th on the Steve Kornacki show do the same thing with the host of that show. I posted my comments about that encounter that day Maya Wiley Notable on Kornacki’s Show (firepub.blogspot.com) and cannot resist posting another comment about her appearance last night. Her message was clear; brain science not only matters but also helps to explain our behavior.

As followers of this blog site know, my interpretation of “brain science” is that our behavior (mental being), like our physical being evolved.  Our behavior evolved from biological zero; it has been modified and continues to be modified by our mentality. Our natural history has an impact on who we are. Another way of looking at this is to say we continue to evolve. What Maya Wiley was saying to Lawrence was that we are learning to abhor racism but many of us still have the basic innate feelings of xenophobia. Of all of our basic traits, racially focused xenophobia seems to be the one that is at the current center of attention.

Greed, for example, was and still is a basic trait critical for primitive survival. It is the classic example of an adaptive trait. We as parents try to teach our children that greed is not good but know we failed at teaching that creed is amoral; look at the business world—Wall Street. Xenophobia is also a basic trait, a little more complex than greed, but still innate. Some of us are fearful of people who are different which we variously describe by skin color, religion, language or by dress. We try to teach our children how foolish it is to be frightened of someone or to hate someone with a different skin color but what has happened in Sanford, Florida shows we often fail just as Wall Street show us we failed to teach greed is wrong.

This is what Maya Wiley was trying to teach us by teaching O’Donnell.  I got the feeling that what she was saying went right over his head and suspect that many of his listeners missed the point as well. Brain science tells us that racism is innate but we can learn to modify that feeling, evolve if you like; the trait is morally wrong. Here is a thought experiment: using photos, galvanic skin response (lie detectors), and chemical evaluations, release of hormones, as has been done numerous times, scientists have tested this hypothesis.

There are two well-known sets of neural-hormonal responses. Both responses are judged by the neural response and the hormones released.  One set of hormones relates to “fight and flight” the other set relates to “rest and digest”. Scientists can measure the concentration of these hormones in the blood and the neural response by galvanic skin response and brain scans: the slow long lasting verses the immediate response. We cannot consciously control the release of hormones, the brain activity, or the neural response as revealed with brain scans. Show the subject a picture of a dangerous animal and then at a different setting show a picture of  afavorite food and measure the response then ask the experimental subject to describe his or her feeling about what they saw. What Maya Wiley was saying is that people respond one way in nanosecond but after they think about it, may respond in another way. The nanosecond response is innate while the later response is the learned response. Learning may or may not modify the innate response.

It is not just focused xenophobia as it relates to racism that can be tested like this; it extends to many things. Show me, as an avowed liberal, a picture of a known Republican during a campaign or a warm cozy fireplace scene in the winter; my response will be different; it is not under my conscious control. My bestial ancestor knew nothing about campaign or warm fireplaces but the response is innate as hierarchy dominance and comfort. Show George Zimmerman a picture of a young black man in a “hoodie” and then a picture of a cocked and ready handgun and the hypothesis is that you will get a different unconscious and conscious response with the picture of the young man but will get the same nanosecond response as well as the delayed response with the gun.  Maya Wiley talked about racism and may not have realized it but she was teaching Lawrence a lesson in evolutionary psychology. 

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