 Hello, welcome to Global Connections on the ThinkTech live streaming network series. I'm your host, Grace Chang, and today we have here in the studio with us Dr. Catherine Almer of the Psychology Department at Hawaii Pacific University. Welcome Catherine. Hey, thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us. So today we're going to be talking about the so-called Burkini Band, which is not very precise, but we'll talk about that a bit more in France and some of the historical and psychological dimensions of that. So before we start, could you tell us a bit about yourself and also your interest in this area of discrimination? Oh, yeah. Thanks. So I'm a professor, assistant professor in psychology at Hawaii Pacific University. I'm interested in studying things like discrimination and the factors that contribute to discrimination. So this really interested me because I felt like for many of the women in France, this was aimed at them in a way that was undue and understandably upsetting. And I thought there were some many factors psychologically that can be used to explain why people are discriminating against those who might not have had anything to do with terrorist activities. And also I think psychology in general can be used to help better understand psychological processes and understand why people discriminate and have prejudice and feel a certain amount of animosity towards outgroup members that are living in their own society or country. Okay. Yeah. And so specifically, we're dealing with this ongoing issue that started this summer in France in July after the Bastille Day attacks in Nice and also an attack on a church in Normandy, a bunch of towns in France instituted a band, not specifically on the Burkini, which is kind of a swimwear that was created so that women who practice that kind of form of modesty can enjoy outdoor and water sports. But it was a ban on any kind of clothing that ostentatiously displayed religious affiliation. And even though the High Court of France ruled that this violated individual freedoms, some of the different towns in France actually retained the ban. There have been reports of people harassing people who are putting on head scarves or wearing Burkinis and so forth. So this is kind of an issue that's still ongoing and this is what we're talking about today. Yeah. And it's fascinating to see that they aimed it towards religious paraphernalia because when you think about those who actually committed the attacks, I don't think any of them were wearing Burkinis or anything of that sort during the attack. So it was just interesting to see that that was the focus for a lot of the bans, that it became a part of what women were wearing. I think what was also very disturbing for many was that when they saw the photos of the women on the beach and then police officers with guns and it seemed like a lot of just reinforcement for one woman wearing something that just has religious significance on a beach could invoke so much attention towards her, I think was very surprising for many people. And it brought up issues about why we're especially regulating women's bodies. When you think about a lot of the, most of these terrorist attacks have been done by men, especially in France. So why is it that the women tend to be the ones that are targeted towards us as men tend not to have as many adornments for their religious background? So that became really interesting for me to look at and just kind of see what's behind this? What's the psychological reasons for why we're choosing women and why we're discriminating against them so forth? Yeah, that's a really interesting point. The gender that is actually perpetrating many of the attacks and women who are, you know, going to the beach. Yeah, exactly. As opposed to driving a van, which was very scary, understandable. I think it's really important to think about psychology and how it can explain this sort of incidence. So I think there's really three key factors when we think about why we're attacking women or why we're aiming women with our discrimination and our prejudice. I think one of them has to be our culturation strategies, the other one being mortality salience and the third one being stereotype content. Now the first one that I wanted to at least bring your attention to is acculturation strategies. I think many different countries evoke and use different acculturation strategies. And John Berry, he does a lot of work with this, but he talks about four. And I just kind of want to go over three that many, many people probably are aware of. Like for the first one, when two different cultural groups come together and they occupy the same space, you often think what's going to happen? How are they going to handle this? How are they going to be able to get along? So like in France, for example, you have the dominant French culture and then you have a Muslim culture coming in and basically being part of that culture. How are they going to negotiate that space? How are they going to live and work together? Well, in John Berry's work, you have something firstly called like separation or segregation. What you could do is just be completely separate from each other. Maybe they go live in their own space. The French live in their own. That's how you create ghettos or Chinatowns in a lot of ways. All we have here in the United States too. And if you do it willingly, you can call separation. The other one is often called integration or multiculturalism. And in that case, people are also maintaining their own identity as well as the host's identity. And they're integrating. They're helping each other out. They're basically informing each other. While the host culture is also saying, look, we're going to make sure there's hospitals, schools, and facilities for you and help your culture grow and thrive. The last one that I think is kind of interesting is what you call the assimilative strategy, which most people in the United States know as the melting pot. So the idea that you come all together and you melt together, it's really the idea that the subordinate culture is becoming part of the host culture right now. And they are just shedding their identity and they're just becoming, in this case, French. They're kind of shedding their Muslim identity at this point. And I think France has really adopted that type of strategy. They're really wanting the Muslim culture just to become French in a lot of ways. And this Burkini is an indication that, look, this is not part of our secular society. We see ourselves as not religiously identification with Muslim traditions. So why are you wearing it? I think that becomes a big part for why the Burkini was aimed at, or at least part of it, and also he jobs in other scarves, because it became such an indication that you're not assimilating with us. You're not becoming a part of us. And that, I think, puts people on edge, especially when their culture has adopted an assimilative approach to that. I think the other instance to think about is mortality salience. And mortality salience is a really interesting psychological phenomenon. When we're reminded of our death, we have this anxiety. And most people don't handle their own mortality very easily. Most people are just kind of like, oh, it's something that really hurts them, really affects them. And so in this case in France, when the July attacks occurred, I think people were becoming very aware of their own death and what could happen to them and what could happen to their own families. Now, with mortality salience, the psychology behind it is that when you are aware of your death, and you become anxious, you actually resort to more traditionalist beliefs. You become much more security based. You really want to start identifying or at least knowing who's in your in-group versus who's in your out-group. And it becomes a really big priority for you when all of a sudden you're aware of death, because the idea is if you're going to die soon, you really want to know who's going to help support you and who's not. And so for many people, especially their niece, I think it was, OK, death is definitely something that could happen for us. It's something scary. And now we're going to resort more to our traditionalist beliefs, and we're going to really want to know who's with us and who's not with us. And I think the Burkini band, the Burkini itself, is just such a visual indication that, look, we're not part of that culture. And it becomes, OK, they're definitely now an out-group member, as opposed to an in-group member. Hopefully that makes some sense. The last key point I think is an important and understanding where a lot about prejudice and discrimination has to do with stereotype content. And the idea behind stereotype content is that there's two factors that really explain where our stereotypes come from. There's the warmth and there's competence. So there's kind of on the two axis there. And we really see social groups as falling along these two dimensions, as either having a lot of warmth or not a lot of warmth or very competent and low on competence. And for example, in our society, or any society we go to, we often view the rich, so people who are very wealthy, as high on competence, actually kind of low on warmth. While we view other groups like, for example, the elderly as really high on warmth, but low on competence. And the interesting thing is when you look at that stereotype content model, you can kind of understand what kind of prejudice can come when you actually put those groups along those dimensions. So for example, when you see a lot of rich, for example, there's this type of envious prejudice that you might have towards them. Like, how could they have that? Is that fair? Should they be able to have those things and us not? They become a threat, a bit of a competition for us. While we look at people who occupy that realm where they're high on warmth, but low on competence, like the elderly, they tend to invoke a sort of paternalism. Like, oh, we should take care of them. There's a certain amount of pity we have towards these people. Now, the research that has been done on this, and this is mostly Peter Glick's work and Susan Fisk, they actually show that Muslims occupy, at least for most people, Muslims occupy kind of the middle realm, where there's sort of a moderate on competence and moderate on warmth. I apologize, moderate on warmth. And I contend that I think that's actually a very vulnerable position to have, because you're seen just as competent enough to be threatening to some extent. But you're not high enough on warmth to evoke a complete amount of pity. So there's this idea that you're kind of a threat, and we want to have some sort of paternalism towards you to get you to assimilate. So I argue that there's this sort of authoritarian assimilation that that group becomes subject to. So they're on that middle continuum of competence and warmth, and people say, OK, look, we're going to kind of force you now to be a part of our group, whether you like it or not. And I think that's where that group is right now. And I think if you think about those three factors, like the acculturation strategies that France has, the mortality salience, how people are being able to deal with that, of all those incidents of terrorism attacks. And then you think about how people stereotype these groups, it becomes evident that if any law was going to be enacted, it was going to aim towards women who wear visual indications that they're an outgroup member, and that this is how we're going to be able to handle that type of discrimination. So I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying it helps at least elucidate the process that a lot of people in France are going through at this point. Yeah, I mean, definitely some of the statements coming from the local leaders who support the ban are that these are headscarf coverings worn by Muslim women are symbols of a political activism which aims at subordinating the women. So this idea is that they are kind of the object of our pity, but also not quite enough because we see also reports of women who are appearing on the beach in kind of attire that they feel comfortable with given their own address. And for example, we're showing one here that is from the weak journal, and we're using this just for the educational purposes, not for entertainment, just to sort of illustrate the type of garment that would be banned in some of the French towns that have retained this ban. So yeah, this kind of, I think it is very, on the one hand they're sort of like we're trying to save women from oppression, but on the other hand, the kind of interactions that come out of this, the women feel harassed, they feel their children are traumatized by events where people are telling them to go home, you shouldn't be here wearing that. Exactly, and there's a sort of irony to the idea that we're actually going to have a law restricting your liberties to help liberate you. Yeah, it's a bit of a slap in the face of anything, it kind of tells women that look, we want you to be liberated, so here, you got to do exactly what we tell you to do. And I think for a lot of the women, a lot of them have said that look, we just feel like we want to wear this, we just feel more comfortable like this, it sort of neglects the fact that they've lived in a culture that this is just how they feel, and that you can't undo it simply by just saying hey, you got to stop wearing this, to expect that from any cultural group is a bit extreme. And that was something else that I thought should be discussed, and I thought it was really interesting all these photos that went up with the Burkini band, the one that was just displayed is actually a very common one, and how much emotion it provoked from a lot of people, and people thought it was a real issue, and it was, to see that especially on the beach, having police officers surrounding a woman I think was just kind of terrifying, imagine if that was to happen here in Waikiki or something, or in Ala Moana where people were coming up, and so eventually I want to talk about some things in which psychology can help in contributing to helping people understand each other's points of views, and understanding other ways besides enacting laws, banning Burkinis to help people just see each other's points of views and maybe relieving prejudice and discrimination, and helping attenuate those feelings that we might have. Well thank you Catherine, that's really, really interesting. So we'll be taking a short break right here. I'm Grace Chang, your host at Global Connections with Dr. Catherine Amar, talking about Francis Burkini band, so we'll be back in just a minute. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energy Man at 12 noon. Aloha Friday, here on Think Tech Hoy. Hey, how you doing? Welcome to Batchi Talk, my name's Andrew Lening, I'm your co-host, and we have a nice program here every Friday at one o'clock on Think Tech Studios, where we talk about technology, and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can, thanks, aloha. Aloha, I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii is My Mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com, where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Chang, here today, talking with Dr. Catherine Alma of the Psychology faculty at Hawaii Pacific University on Francis Burkini band. Welcome back, Catherine. So very interesting discussion you talked about about these different psychological, I guess, frameworks to understand what's going on, why this very emotional reaction towards how women are dressing when they come to the beach. We were talking about France's policy for dealing with the multiple cultures in their society today is more towards an assimilationist model rather than integration or separation. And France also has this basis in the republic and this concept of laicite, which is a bit more intense than our Anglo-American secularism. So that's also been kind of thrown out there as one of the justifications for this band, that this is a religious symbol. And France has been probably more, has much more of a harder stance on the wearing of religious symbolism in public. For example, they banned the headscarf in public schools on public servants and the covered veil in all public spaces. So as far as we, you're talking about, psychology can sort of help deal with these kinds of divisions and lack of understandings in society. When we have this kind of a base for, I mean legal, what you're legally permitted to do out in the public space, I think having a ban on public servants in public spaces such as, or public institutions rather, such as schools, when that kind of seeps out into all public spaces like beaches and then where else? How do we approach this kind of question? That's a really good question. I have to go back to, I'm thinking about like Gordon Alport and his book on the nature of prejudice. And I think he talks about something really interesting in that book. And he talks about how prejudices is really an intense, passionate feeling. And we can think about this even currently now in the United States when we think about the elections. People have very intense feelings and a lot of that has to do with prejudice for both sides to a lot of extent. And when you think about prejudice and we all have some sort of prejudice to some extent, many people might think to themselves, oh, I don't have any prejudice towards anybody. But when you're actually tested or when you think about it, you might have certain prejudices or feelings, either positive or negative towards a certain group that has nothing to do actually with that individual's quality. Like for example, I will often ask my students a question about babysitting and I'll present to them two distinct people that are completely qualified to be babysitters. And they're good with children and your child has no preference for them. And one is a man and one is a woman. Who are you gonna hire? And a lot of the students will say the woman right away. They'll be like, I'm gonna hire the woman. And some of them will say, well, I just think that she'll be better at taking care of my children at some point. And then some just say they feel better about it. They have a certain prejudice toward against men and towards women to be able to take care of their children. I think that follows here even in this situation with prejudice against a certain type of religious group. There's that certain just extreme passionate feeling that Gordon Alport also mentions that it's really hard to reason with. That even when you think about all the reasons for why you shouldn't have that type of prejudice and how it's illogical and how it doesn't make sense. Oftentimes the passion and the prejudice remains. That it stays there. So it's not easily reasoned away. And a lot of psychologists talk about, especially if you think about, for example, another psychologist, Jennifer Height, has been really talking about seeing the other side and dealing with this type of differences in opinion. When you think about, in a situation with France, a lot of people are saying, look, I think it's right. I think this ban, it helps protect us. A lot of people are like, no, I don't. Well, how do you deal with all these completely two different opinions in the same situation? And a lot of it has to do with both, some of the both groups have, or a lot of the people in both groups have made up their mind already on how they feel. The prejudice is already there. And even if you try to reason to some extent with them, the prejudice isn't necessarily gonna go away. So I'm actually arguing to some extent that we don't try to necessarily reason with our enemies or reason with people about their prejudices. Instead, I really think we have to consider the fact of using emotional provocation to some extent. I'm not saying that we go and we try to equally use guns and police officers to enact an opposite ban, but it's the idea that things like art and music and other things that can evoke emotion can be just as useful. And even like photographs, for example, photographs of people being forced to take off their burkinis can be emotionally provocative enough to have people on both sides go, okay, well, maybe I should consider this. Maybe my feelings now are a little different about that. I think that's really important. I also think it's important that when you deal with prejudice and discrimination that both sides consider taking more time with their thoughts and feelings. I think it becomes a very knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people to say to themselves, okay, that's immediately how I feel and this is how I'm going to think. And one really, I think we should take a lot more time in thinking over a situation and what it means and its implications before we just say to ourselves, okay, this is how I'm gonna handle it and this is my opinion on this. And then I think, and this is probably not gonna be the most popular opinion out there, I think we often have to try to consider how we're wrong. I think it's really hard for people to walk around day to day trying to find evidence of how they themselves are wrong. I think we spend most of our time looking around for evidence to go, yeah, that makes me right and that's why I'm justified in believing this. But the reality is, if you're really gonna see the other side and ever have any hope of changing the other side's point of view, you really have to think about how you're wrong and all the evidence in which makes you wrong. So even though I also personally believe there shouldn't be a Burkini ban, I really do strive to see how the other side needs to feel protected to a lot of extent and try to understand their point of view and how I can be wrong in just assuming that they're having this sort of immoral hatred that comes out of nowhere. I think by doing that, it will actually get us further and actually more of an integration approach than an assimilation or a separation approach. That's just what psychology would have to say. Very interesting. Yeah, I mean, in pluralistic society, we can either have it where different groups with different perspectives just compete against each other where they don't never come to some common ground. But I mean, yeah, as you were saying, no, maybe people aren't fully rational. Politics itself is not fully rational as we often see and we all come from very subjective positions and how do we promote a more intersubjective kind of interaction and come to, yeah, I think understanding each other, maybe empathy or understanding each other's experiences or perspectives. Exactly, but it has to come from both sides too. You can't just say, okay, one side is gonna see the other side or one side is just gonna live on their own because if that's gonna be the case, if neither side wants to see the other side, you're sort of living in a mental separation or segregationist society as it is. So you might be arguing for assimilation, but if you're never really gonna see the other side's point of view, it's just at this point you're just separated and you're always gonna be in those kind of different mental spaces. It's not very conducive, especially if you wanna eventually work together. So I'm guessing France doesn't always wanna be in a situation where they're always gonna see people who wear religious garb as the outsider. I'm not sure if that's necessary, whether they're aim or their other hope. At the same time, I know they want a situation where people feel more integrated. Can you have that while still maintaining diversity? That's something that I think is still being played out on the geopolitical stage. Can we maintain homogeneity with diversity? I mean, that's almost an ironic conundrum, if anything. So yeah, it's something to see how that will actually play out. It's unfortunate that so many of the mayors, though, and the people in charge have kept the ban, even though higher courts have said, look, it's not right and it's against rights. So that's unfortunate. I mean, I think you definitely see how people who initially were very supportive of the ban on the headscarves and other religious symbols in public institutions, how they reacted negatively to the ban, possibly because they understood that this is sort of your personal space. Again, I think there's a variety of factors, the rational, which is how do we define the separation between the public, where in laicite, when you come to the public, you leave behind your particularistic, private beliefs, but is going out on the street, a public space, is that just too extensive a definition of public? And definitely I can see how the emotions and the sentiments of different individuals kind of come into play and how they understand how do we define public versus private choice? And how do we respect that to an extent? That's difficult. For a lot of people, I'm thinking about the incident actually in New York that happened here where a woman came up to another woman and actually tore off their scarves and yelled at them and told them to get out of this country and so forth. So there's that idea that she's in the public, but in a lot of ways. I was actually astonished at her behavior because it was like, wow, you're in a public space and you're demanding that they kind of, in a lot of ways, like just France with laicite is to get part with that private space. We kind of have that also in the United States to some extent too, where we demand that people who come in public places kind of conform at least to a certain standard and when they don't, we get so upset with that. But at the same time, it's illegal to rip people's clothes off and yell at them and we have certain laws that protect us from that, thankfully. So yeah, it's very unfortunate to see those things happen. At the same time, yes, I think it's really important to consider, look, a lot of this is coming from very emotional foundation, now that emotion is completely horrible or anything, but we also have to think about the idea that reason itself, although is good, is not gonna be the only way to sort of overcome that prejudice. We also have to just be open to other arguments and open to other feelings and expressions. Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, because this is a political issue and we tend to think of politics as something, well, I'm a political scientist, so I think a lot of thinkers do tend to approach this. This is something rational, we can argue reasonably, but I think psychology, as you've been discussing, is useful for helping us address those other ways that human beings see and understand things. Yeah, great, and I think on those lines, I think we really have to consider other things besides using reason, it could be art, it could be music, it could be photos, it could be journalism that really helps people both sides see, okay, oh, I now, given that feeling, I understand their point of view, and I think being able to do that peacefully, kindly, respectfully will get us farther than a lot of very good logical reasons. I'm not saying we should have abandoned reason, but I'm saying we definitely need to consider emotion and how its role in convincing us of each other's sides, or at least seeing each other's points of views. Yeah, acknowledging the different dimensions of how, what human beings are like, essentially. Exactly, exactly. Thank you so much, Catherine. Oh, thank you. We've been here with Catherine Almer, assistant professor of psychology at Hawaii Pacific University, talking about Francis Burkini Band and some of the psychological dimensions behind it. Thank you for joining us, you can find me here, your host Grace Chang at Global Connections every Thursday at 1 p.m. See you next time, aloha.