A prescription for prejudice: Is there a pill to reduce racism?

A leading Oxford University scholar knows a single blood pressure pill won't cure the world of racism — but it might relieve the symptoms.

"Because in a way, you know, you are your brain..." said Dr. Sylvia Terbeck, an Oxford PhD and Plymouth University professor.

"So that, I think, is a key idea; that everything comes down to biology."

'Everything comes down to biology,'- Dr. Sylvia Terbeck

Her theory — merging neuroscience with psychological science — is the latest example of a whole new world of research being done to explain and ideally wipe out the historically tenacious social disease.

And while it sounds far-fetched, Dr. Terbeck notes there's some encouraging data to back it.

It began when Terbeck looked at propranolol, a pill commonly prescribed to treat a number of things, including high blood pressure. In doing so, it works in parts of the brain that impact certain emotions, like anxiety.

That got her to thinking that racism is almost always cloaked in some strong emotion like anxiety and ultimately asking if by treating anxiety, one can treat racism.

"It was really the idea of neuroscience. Is anxiety a component of our racial biases?" Terbeck said.

Based on that theory, she and her colleagues collected a group of people, all white, and through a series of tests measured their overall racial attitudes toward black people.

She then prescribed propranolol to half the group and a placebo to the other half. She then retested them, and determined the ones who'd taken the real anti-anxiety pills scored a lot lower on the test — in other words, revealed fewer racial biases — than those who took the placebo.

Dr. Sylvia Terbeck researches the link between anxiety and racial biases.

"They were then, with the reduced fear, equally fast to associate the negative things with their own race and with another, whites and blacks," she said. "So they didn't have this bias anymore."

What remains to be seen, however, is if that change in feelings would translate into a change in behaviour.

With the help of virtual reality, she's going to create social scenarios, go back to her test groups — one taking the drugs and one taking the placebo — and compare how they react in those scenarios.

'I think all white people here in North America have a bias inside of us,'- Kim Radersma

As for the remainder of society, the challenge will be greater. People often aren't ready to admit they have the disease.

"I think all white people here in North America have a bias inside of us," said Brock University researcher Kim Radersma.

"And most people are really upset if I say that, because it points a finger."

Radersma, a former high school teacher based in Colorado, moved to Ottawa to get her doctorate in "Critical Whiteness" studies. A relatively new program that researches the existence and root causes of white supremacy.

"Really critical whiteness studies looks past white privilege," Radersma said. "It digs much deeper in looking at the systems that allow for white privilege; this power structure. This sort of system of domination, where race relations mirror power relations."

Radersma, who admits her research is controversial, said it comes from a deeply personal, as opposed to sociological, place. It was after she adopted a black child and saw how he was treated, that she realized how very little she'd known about racism, and how much she'd contributed to it.

"I often expected people of colour to be nice, and if they weren't nice or polite, I would dismiss them as part of their ethnicity," she said. "So, a white person, I don't expect to be nice to me. But a person of colour, I would expect them to treat me with respect. Because for me as a white woman growing up in North America, your identity is formed around you being at the top of the hierarchy."

Radersma hopes her PhD-driven research will culminate into workshops for educators and classrooms throughout North America, and translate further into changed behaviours.

Dr. Rudolfo Mendoza-Denton

And for those who already recognize their own racial biases, Dr. Rudolfo Mendoza-Denton has some interesting solutions.

Mendoza-Denton is with the psychology department at the University of California. He's gathered together the research that's already out there and created a blog called "The Top Ten Strategies for Reducing Prejudice."

Bit-sized and seemingly innocuous, but all of them based on well-researched science, Dr. Mendoza-Denton says they're designed to help people get to know one another.

In other words, forget that whole 'familiarity breeds contempt' concept. In reality, when it comes to racism, familiarity can breed comprehension. Which is why, number 10 on the list is simple :Travel. Be it to exotic locales or nearby neighbourhoods.

"What you find is that people essentially normalize one another," said Mendoza-Denton. "You know, they water lawns, just like you do. They take out the trash just like you do. They send their kids to school. And so there's a humanity that's often prevented by the very fear and threat and often times, hatred that goes on."

'There's a humanity that's often prevented by the...hatred that goes on'- Dr. Mendoza-Denton

Mendoza-Denton, Radersma and Terbeck admit however, that racial biases won't be wiped out with one single solution.

"Wouldn't it be lovely if you had a pill and it made you fly? And nothing else, no side-effects, you could just fly," Terbeck said.