How to Influence Culture (and Work to Eradicate Racism)

Donald Trump is a showman. He's an appalling and revolting racist clown who shocks, amuses, and offends his audience to stay relevant. He is a circus player that stands on a platform built not of government and policy, but of fear and blind loyalty. There's no one who better understands the idea that "There's no such thing as bad publicity" than Donald Trump.

What he also understands too well is that words have power, especially the words of arguably one of the most powerful and influential world leaders on earth.

Trump's "go back to your country" tweets have been circulating social media and the news for days now, and his comments have once more perpetuated the idea that it's okay to be outwardly racist towards people of color and discriminate against women.

What's worse is that his administration and the politicians that support him have either reinforced and amplified his messages or have remained silent or indifferent. They have repeatedly reinforced our systematic racism and sexism with both his policies and his words. And when Trump, the "leader of the Free World," consistently repeats this behavior and upholds his racist values, he creates a divided and regressive society, a country that cannot move forward into the future because some of its citizens (and their representatives) conform to the norms of this racist culture that keeps them in the past.

How do you change the mind of a racist?

In psychology, there are three types of conformity: compliance, identification, and internalization.

Compliance is the most shallow form of conformity. It's when someone changes their public behavior temporarily, but not their private beliefs. Identification is when someone changes their public behavior and private beliefs, but only in the presence of the group that they are identifying with. These changes are usually short-term. Internalization is when someone genuinely changes their public behavior and private beliefs permanently for the long-term. This is the deepest level of conformity.

It is difficult to change the mind of a racist when they have internalized their longstanding beliefs. Some people are so engrained in their own understanding of how the world works and what it should look like that they remain ignorant—or even, indifferent—towards change and anything that challenges their worldview. It is, however, easier to influence their behaviors than their values by making small changes in your own public behavior that go towards a larger goal to create new cultural norms that promote and reinforce the values of diversity and equity.

Cultural norms are patterns of repeated behaviors and beliefs or values shared by a society or group of people. When a behavior is repeated publicly over and over again, it creates a norm. The norm then becomes a part of that society's culture.

Small changes can make a big difference

On a smaller scale, it's easier to observe how small changes in behavior can manipulate the culture of a group or micro-society through social influence and the rules of conformity.

For instance: You're waiting in line at the door to see some local bands play at your neighborhood dive bar. There's a "suggested donation" that goes towards paying the live bands. You observe that the three people in front of you don't pay anything. There's less social pressure to pay the suggested donation when you get to the front of the line. However, if you make a change to this observed behavior and donate $5 while encouraging two friends you came with to do the same by explaining why it's important to pay bands fairly, it may influence the people standing in line behind you to follow suit. They may do so due to the social desire or pressure to conform with the rest of the group (no one likes to be the black sheep), or they might even start to value live music and understand the economics behind being in a local band more.

If the above example happens enough times to the same group of people, these people may individually begin to move from complying once to identifying on a greater level with the group of bar patrons or even eventually internalize the idea of paying bands fairly.

Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words

In larger societies, especially ones that highly value individualism like the United States, it's harder to change the behaviors of millions of people. However, silence and indifference will never be able to solve the problems of this country and the problems that we have in our culture.

When Donald Trump doubled down on his racist comments that he made over Twitter by further saying at a rally, "They don't love our country" (referring to the four progressive congresswomen and specifically targeting Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Somalian refugee), he evoked his MAGA audience to repeatedly chant, "Send her back! Send her back!" Trump stood there in silence, appearing indifferent, but later claims he was unhappy with the response from the audience and attempted to stop the chants by "speaking very quickly" (which, as the video of him shows, he did not).

His silence and indifference, compounded by the power and influence that he has as the commander in chief of our country and the very public platform he is able to use to amplify his messages as a world leader, signaled to his supporters that their behavior and their words were acceptable to say publicly. It reinforced the racism in this country and swiped at all of the progress we've built up as an equal society over time.

Creating new norms that promote our country's values of diversity and inclusion

In order to combat the racism and division in this country, each person is responsible for their public words and their behaviors. Small changes in our actions are necessary in order to make bigger changes to society as a whole. We must speak up publicly and repeatedly against words and deeds that contradict the values we hold, defend our values of diversity, equity, and inclusion of all peoples, and though we may not be able to change the private beliefs of racists, we must not reinforce their ideals by staying silent.

It is important to work against the racist culture Trump is creating within our society by speaking up publicly and encouraging our representatives to do the same.

Together, we must create and reinforce new norms within our culture that will help steer our country back towards the right direction in acceptance of people of all colors, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic classes.