Recently, I have been reading books about racism, and one of the most established, perhaps one of the most widely cited, is Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones’s “The Gardener’s Tale. The Harvard University public health researcher systematically mapped out three layers of racism: institutional, personally mediated, and internalized (Jones, 2000).
Clearly, institutional racism sits at the root of the other layers. If people were taught or influenced by racially biased societal values growing up, those values are ingrained. As they grow into adults, some might learn to control their behavior without rewiring their beliefs. Others might outgrow it through travel, education, or other life experiences. Also, racism will still easily perpetuate if there is visible privilege (i.e., internalized racism) that stems from institutional racism.
While it definitely looks massive, in my opinion, institutional racism may actually be the most straightforward level to target. Because policy-making on a larger scale might be more effective than changing individual behaviors. You can address it directly with data, protocols, organizational policies, and laws. If an insurance system or hospital admission workflow is racially biased, for instance, policymakers can rewrite the institutional rules or mandate a strict evaluation protocol that forces equal access first (assuming there is no resistance).
Personally Mediated and Internalized Racism
These levels of racism are almost impossible to address (and resolve) collectively. As the article states, personally mediated racism “is what most people think of when they hear the word racism” (Jones, 2000). Yet human behavior is incredibly complex. One thing to keep in mind is that not all behaviors are dispositional, rational, or deliberate. Oftentimes, they are situational, impulsive, and emotional.
For many communication, policy, or public health professionals, the foremost question is: how to define the target audience? If someone curses with racial slurs or expresses racially biased views under high emotional stress (or another mental crisis), are they absolutely a racist? Most likely, they will not think of themselves as racist. So even if the campaign reaches them, they will almost certainly feel irrelevant. And later, they continue to racially bully someone else and still don’t associate it with themselves being racist.
The complexity of human behaviors
Despite being frustrating, this is a very realistic situation. I ask this question as a minority woman who has tons of experience with all types of “ism”. Considering it objectively, I want to look past sociocultural-specific dynamics and, at a macro level, at universal patterns I have learned over the years. But this analysis shouldn’t excuse racism.
First, people do not actively think all the time. Oftentimes, people operate on autopilot and are responding with heuristics- the mental shortcuts and templates that run in the background. Especially when they are under stress or possess a hyper-concrete, rigid thinking style. Those thinkers usually employ one template to navigate through the world.
This thinking style is not a problem by itself. And, strictly speaking, it does not reflect intelligence. A 2019 study provided evidence of a correlation between cognitive inflexibility and extreme attitudes, including harming others for the group’s interests. But in practice, most of the problem occurs when they encounter something or someone different. Their brains can not effectively evaluate whether the difference between them is mutually exclusive or equally good/right/wrong/bad. I’ve seen this type of thinking in people of all races; it is more a cognitive style than a specific cultural one. This combination of binary thinking and zero-sum mentality assumes that “correctness” or “goodness” is finite, so if others are good/right, they must be bad/wrong. If minority groups gain resources or socioeconomic status, that must be at their expense. Or, if they don’t attack others first, others will attack them.
Therefore, they can be physically uncomfortable with things that don’t meet their specific metrics and instinctively flag them as threats (only because they are different). So in the context of racism, this metric is race. But in a different context, this can be age, gender, sexuality, nation of origin, body type, life choice, career choice, or anything that doesn’t fit into their template.
Sometimes it is a mental crisis
Second, there are situational factors at play. Sometimes people just want to be perceived as superior to disguise their shortcomings. For instance, accent shaming. The harshest accent correction I ever received wasn’t really about pronunciation, but about that one person who didn’t understand me when everyone else at the table did. The racism was more about managing their own image by shifting blame rather than conducting a mental, systematic review on the societal influence of a different accent in English. And just like sexism, ageism, or any kind of shame, racism was just conveniently weaponized for asserting power at that given moment.
That said, people may use racism more reactively, reflecting their immediate needs rather than their values, dispositions, or predictions of behavior in a neutral environment. I have also met people who married interracially, yet attacked people who were the same race as their partner because of conflicts of interest. And as mentioned above, they almost certainly do not think of themselves as racist (and in fact, they are not, in general).
Can communication really help?
Instead of trying to educate certain groups to magically eliminate their lifelong biases, professionals may want to address mediated and internalized racism as a subset of public mental health issues. And this must cover both sides: the perpetrators and the victims of racism.
For the perpetrators, public health campaigns may focus on emotional regulation and stress management. By maximizing the knowledge and tools for handling their own personal crisis, anxieties, and vulnerabilities, we neutralize the emotional fuel that causes them to weaponize discrimination in daily interactions in the first place.
For the affected communities, we focus on validation and empowerment. Knowledge mobilization may provide objective, data-driven validation. By explicitly addressing the structural wrongness of racism and validating the racial trauma, we equip victims with practical self-advocacy tools, strategies, and resources. Many trauma survivors just want to be heard and seen. Hopefully, these practical resources can help reframe how they internalize the system’s flaws. Also, if these groups are immigrants, share the information through collaboration with their community’s media rather than relying solely on mainstream distribution.
Source: Jones, C. P. (2000). Levels of racism: A theoretic framework and a gardener’s tale. American Journal of Public Health, 90(8), 1212–1215.
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*Disclaimer: The views expressed in this content are strictly those of the author and do not reflect the official policy, position, or endorsement of any public sector entity, non-governmental organization (NGO), or other institution. Also, this content is for informational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose, give medical advice, or advise on policy-making. If you are in crisis, please seek professional help. Always prioritize your well-being.
