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I remember the first time I watched The Little Mermaid. At the time of its release, I was just beginning to assert my independence and insist that I was “too old for baby movies.” Nevertheless, I spent countless childhood summers trying to perfect the Ariel hair flip, jealous of my girlfriends with longer hair and … Read more

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As we turn our attention to the holiday season ripe with office Christmas parties I want to make a suggestion. It’s not the typical “stay out of the spiked eggnog before you get too drunk and make a scene” advice. No, I encourage that (when done safely of course).

Go ahead. Get your party on!
Go ahead. Get your party on!

I’ll warm up with the idea of “Christmas” parties to begin with. This is a perfect example of how diversity in workplace does not necessarily equate to inclusion. Holding a Christmas party and assuming everyone will feel welcome to celebrate the “cheer” is like inviting a vegetarian to a BBQ.  It may feel harmless to those majority that celebrate the holiday but these are the kind of micro-aggressions that create real divides (or at the very least some significant indigestion).

Even as a vegetarian, I have to say....that looks miggggghhhhtty good.
Even as a vegetarian, I have to say….that looks miggggghhhhtty good.

But if you insist that Christmas is a holiday that must be celebrated in name, (as opposed to say, a winter gathering), then go ahead and put your money where your mouth is and put “Christ back into Christmas.” I’m not saying you should only sing hymns. Go ahead and have a good time, with the usual Christmas festivities of singing, eating, drinking and being merry, but let’s at least get the representation of Christ correct.

I think it’s time we “Make Jesus Brown Again.”

Let’s be honest. Not a single one of these snowy white, Europeanized versions of the Savior is an accurate portrayal.

Blue eyes? Really? Was Jesus not born in Bethlehem? Smack dab in the Middle East? 
Blue eyes? Really? Was Jesus not born in Bethlehem? Smack dab in the Middle East?

Frankly, it feels rather blasphemous. Imagine if we did this to other important icons – a painting of Martin Luther King, Jr. portrayed as a white man, for example. Or President Trump with a Hispanic look.

Got that right. 
Got that right.

 There would be justifiable outrage. And yet no one seems to bat an eyelash at our gross visual misinterpretation of one of the most influential people in history.

Let’s take a closer look at what Jesus would have actually looked like. In this article, the BBC did a thorough job at reviewing Jesus’s look, head to toe, but I was most struck by the mention of a recent reconstruction done by forensic anthropologist Richard Neave.  According to this article from Popular Mechanics, Jesus’s features were painstakingly reconstructed for accuracy to be typical of Galilean Semites of his era.

“For those accustomed to traditional Sunday school portraits of Jesus, the sculpture of the dark and swarthy Middle Eastern man that emerges from Neave’s laboratory is a reminder of the roots of their faith.”

At a time when our fears around terrorism coming from the middle east are reaching a fever pitch, perhaps it’s time to paint a more accurate version of the savior so many Americans worship. Turns out, that the real version, a brown, middle eastern refugee, probably looked an awful lot like the same people we so fear.

Moving into the traditional American holidays, independent of your religious affiliation,  let’s try to keep this reminder close to our hearts and extend the same warmth, kindness and love to all of our neighbors, that Christians would extend to their brown refugee Savior.

Merry everything and enjoy the season of eggnog!

 

Listing image: By Donatas Dabravolskas [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

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Take a look at the pictures on your walls. Go ahead.

Close your eyes and take a little walk down your hallway, look at the photos on your refrigerator and by your bedside. What do you see?

Now pick up that magazine in the corner of your living room and flip through the pages. Think about the last movie or TV show you watched.

See your own reflection?  See your own reflection?

For most of us, the faces looking back at us look familiar.

The media we consume are often reflections of ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. It’s what we’re programmed to do. We seek the same because that’s where we find comfort and safety.  Our ancestral brain sets off mini stress responses anytime we are around people that are different from us. Even if those people initially look like us, the fact that we don’t recognize them, and therefore cannot predict that they align with our values and ideations, gives us a spike of stress.

In what has to be on the top of the lists of fun experiments of all time, a 2015 A-team of scientists, lead by McGill University psychology professor Jeffrey Mogil, tested the reaction of students to painful stimuli (submerging their hands into ice cold water) under different test conditions. No, I’m not a masochist and don’t think inducing pain is fun (even with students; keep reading for the fun part). The test conditions were set up as follows.

I know it's not quite a hand in ice water but it's close enough...and funny.  I know it’s not quite a hand in ice water but it’s close enough…and funny.

Ice Submersion:

  1. Alone
  2. With a friend
  3. With a stranger
  4. Between two strangers given metyrapone, a stress-blocking drug

Students were then asked to rate their level of pain. Students who were paired with a friend suffered the most, suggesting that the empathy they shared for their friend in pain raised their own levels of pain.

I'm uncomfortable for myself—but also for you, my friends! I’m uncomfortable for myself—but also for you, my friends!

Fascinatingly, those participants who were given the flight-or-fight-response-blocking drug metyraphone also showed increased empathy for the stranger. Here comes the best part of the experiment. A final condition was tested between two strangers who had spent the 15 minutes prior to testing playing the video game Rock Band® together.

Here, too, the empathy barrier between strangers was breached. Participants who had played Rock Band® together had higher pain ratings, when placed together, than participants who had not played together.

Just imagine the level of social empathy developing in this scene.  Just imagine the level of social empathy developing in this scene.

Our brain may have hard wired us for bias, but it’s important to keep in mind that these connections are flexible and largely determined by our willingness to fight consciously against our pre-wired programing. It appears the fight may not always be that hard … it may be as simple and close by as the nearest gaming console.