Keon West is professor of social psychology at the University of London. He was born in Trinidad, grew up in Jamaica, and studied in the US and France before coming to the UK as a Rhodes scholar in 2006 to do a doctorate at Oxford University.
Why do you think we need a book about the science of racism?
What I find frustrating, shocking and worrying is that as a society, when we talk about racism we express feelings about it and emotions and opinions, but our conversations aren’t based on facts – or science. Not only that, we make the mistake of misinterpreting our feelings as if they were facts. This leads nowhere: one person will say: “Well, I don’t see any racism, so racism is over.” And another person will say: “Well, someone didn’t hire me for a job, so racism is alive and well.” Both of these people are wrong. The second person is right in terms of the conclusion they’ve come to, but in terms of the methodology they’ve used to arrive at that conclusion, they’re both horribly wrong. You can’t tell that racism is or isn’t happening because you know a Black person who happens to earn a lot of money, or you know a Black person who wasn’t hired for a job. Neither of those anecdotes prove anything.
What kind of reaction did you get when you pitched the book to publishers?
Frequently, I would get this kind of frowning face, and people would say, don’t you want to tell us a story about the time someone called you the N-word or something? And I think, well, that’s incredibly boring. I mean, what could you possibly learn from such a story? Is that news? Are there people who couldn’t have guessed that I would be called the N-word at some point without my assistance? I understand the desire for narrative and I can see why it’s useful, but I do think the hesitation around understanding facts and hearing about evidence is a real problem.
Given the fact that there is such an array of science that shows us racism still exists in our society, why is it not deployed more in the debate about discrimination?
One reason is that people assume science is boring. But the other problem is that the science is really quite confronting and overwhelming. And rather than facing up to the evidence that racism is real, it’s much more comfortable for commentators to think, Oh, well, let’s have a debate about whether golliwogs are offensive or not – on the one hand, on the other hand. I think these kinds of debates are a very comfortable space for a lot of journalism and politics. The truth makes people feel very uncomfortable.
If unconscious bias training doesn’t work, what measures can we take to counter racism?
Unconscious bias training works sometimes, it’s just inconsistent. If you personally want to feel less racist towards other people, then I think strategies like inter-group contact, where you interact with people who aren’t the same race as yourself, are incredibly effective. Education is key, and so is changing your media diet. But while it’s great if some white person likes me more, that’s not what really matters to me. I would rather get the job. I’d rather get paid the amount I deserve to be paid. I’d rather be treated fairly by police officers and in a court of law. These are really important things that have huge, damaging effects on my life. And to accomplish those things, you need changes that are more systematic, more structural, that have to do with power.
Could Kemi Badenoch becoming leader of the Conservative party help shift the balance?
To have arrived at a place where a Black woman can be the head of a major political party is a sign of progress for the United Kingdom, and I think that’s fantastic. But I don’t get the sense that Kemi Badenoch is trying to be right about racism. I actually think what she understands about the reality of racism, from what I’ve read, is severely lacking, and I think her responses to it will therefore be horrifically inadequate, if not actively detrimental. If a white man were to say the same things, we would say he is worryingly racist and will probably do bad things for ethnic minorities in the UK. I don’t think you can get to do and say the same things as a Black woman and be praised for them.
The Science of Racism: Everything You Need to Know But Probably Don’t – Yet by Keon West is published by Picador on 23 January (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
