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Bad Behavior Toward Significant Other in Tough Times Has More Impact than Positive Gestures

Refraining from criticism or abandonment is better than simply being encouraging, Baylor University study finds Refraining from bad behavior toward a significant other during stressful life events is more important than showing positive behavior, according to a Baylor University study. Compared with positive gestures, negative ones tend to trigger more intense and immediate responses, according to the study. And how a couple works together during stressful times is associated with individual well-being as well as satisfaction with the relationship. “When people face stressful life events, they are especially sensitive to negative behavior in their relationships, such as when a partner seems to be argumentative, overly emotional, withdrawn or fails to do something that was expected,” said researcher Keith Sanford, Ph.D., professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. “In contrast, they’re less sensitive to positive behavior — such as giving each other comfort,” he said. The study also found that low doses of a behavior are most important, and over time, more extreme levels have less impact. “Because people are especially sensitive to negative relationship behavior, a moderate dose may be sufficient to produce a nearly maximum effect on increasing life stress,” Sanford said. “After negative behavior reaches a certain saturation point, it appears that stress is only minimally affected by further increases in the dose of relationship problems.” The study — “Negative Relationship Behavior Is More Important Than Positive: Correlates of Outcomes During Stressful Life Events” — is published in the Journal of Family Psychology. Sanford and co-researcher Alannah Shelby Rivers, doctoral candidate in psychology and neuroscience, surveyed couples experiencing stressful life events to measure their behavior, relationship satisfaction, personal well-being and quality of life. The research consisted of two studies done using data from Internet samples. In the first study, 325 couples who were married or living with a partner all reported experiences of at least one of six possible stressful events within the past month, including: losing a job, becoming a primary caregiver of an older relative, experiencing a parent’s death, experiencing a child’s death, not having enough resources to afford basic necessities, and experiencing bankruptcy, foreclosure or repossession of a house or car. The second study included 154 people who were either married or living with a partner and experiencing a serious medical issue meeting one or more of these criteria: a condition requiring hospitalization or a trip to the emergency room, a serious chronic condition and a life-threatening condition. All participants reported that they had visited a medical practitioner within the past year for treatment of their conditions. Researchers used a scale that included 18 items — nine for negative and nine for positive behavior. Participants were asked to remember the past month, then write a few words describing different memories of interactions occurring in their relationships and indicate how often specific types of interactions occurred in their relationships. All participants also were asked questions about how rewarding their relationships were, their general well-being (such as being active and vigorous) and their quality of life (such as health). Those in the first study also were asked about stress, their coping strategies in general and their coping style in the relationship. The second study, examining couple’s behavior during stressful medical events, showed lower levels of negative behavior than the first study dealing with other types of stressful issues. “It is possible that couples facing stressful medical situations are less likely to blame each other,” researchers wrote. “When people face stressful life events, it’s common to experience both positive and negative behavior in their relationships,” Sanford said. “When the goal is to increase feelings of well-being and lessen stress, it may be more important to decrease negative behavior than to increase positive actions.” ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit www.baylor.edu/artsandsciences.

Surveying Patients about Health Care Providers Is Likely of Little Use

But a newly developed questionnaire delves more deeply and may provide valuable information, Baylor University study finds For anyone who has ever taken a survey after a medical appointment and wondered whether the effort was worthwhile, the answer is probably “No,” says a Baylor University psychologist and researcher. Health care providers are pushing to assess patient satisfaction, and many companies charge millions of dollars to assess patients for the providers. But while the intentions are great, “when I started looking at the instruments currently being used to assess doctor-patient relationships, it became apparent they were highly problematic and not providing useful information,” said Keith Sanford, Ph.D. professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. After conducting a series of studies to clarify problems with existing scales, Sanford — a scholar of psychometrics who develops assessment instruments — has created a new tool to measure patient experience during consultations, and research findings suggest it works better than others. The research — “Medical Consultation Experience Questionnaire: Assessing Perceived Alliance and Experienced Confusion During Medical Consultations” — was published in Psychological Assessment, a journal of the American Psychological Association, and funded in part by a grant from Baylor College of Medicine. Working with Baylor University psychologists were physicians with Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. The new instrument — the Medical Consultation Experience Questionnaire (MCEQ) — measures two aspects of patient experience — “alliance” and “confusion.” Researchers stressed that it addresses the consultation, not treatment results. Practitioners strive for a good alliance, in which the patient sees the practitioner as committed, competent and dedicated to understanding patient desires and views. Another goal is good exchange of information to avoid confusion. But in attempting to measure how well those goals are being met, some questionnaires have limited options that may result in skewed results, Sanford said. For example, one survey offers respondents a 4-point scale in which the answers range from “always” to "never” to such questions as “How often did doctors listen carefully to you?” Another existing assessment instrument asks respondents to use a 5-point scale — from “poor” to “excellent” — to rate practitioner communication in such areas as whether they were treated with respect. The problem is that most respondents choose the top response for each item, with fewer than 5 percent choosing the bottom option, previous research has shown. While such a scale can identify “highly disgruntled” patients, “it cannot make reliable distinctions between patients having experiences ranging from marginally acceptable to extremely positive,” researchers wrote. “The key question is whether a ‘good doctor’ is a single thing or whether there is a range of goodness,” Sanford said. “If you ask the right questions, you’re able to get results that show that range.” To evaluate the new questionnaire, researchers conducted three studies with a total of 576 participants. They compared responses to the new survey with those participants’ responses to other questionnaires. Respondents ranged from adults with diabetes and/or hypertension to parents of children requiring plastic surgery (for such conditions as a cleft palate or facial injury) to parents of children with medical conditions meeting one or more of such criteria as having to go to an emergency room, spend time in a hospital, cope with a chronic condition or deal with a life-threatening condition. The study results support the validity of the new questionnaire in several important ways. It allows for measuring a wider range of patient experiences with more extensive and specific responses, making for better assessment of “alliance” and “confusion” — rather than merely identifying only the most dissatisfied or angry patients, Sanford said. “One of the reasons this is so important is if you don’t form an alliance with your practitioner, they may give you all the wonderful advice in the world, but you might not follow it, or you might be skeptical,” Sanford said. “And if you don’t quite understand what you are supposed to do, that will interfere with your doing the recommended actions.” Sanford noted that because the study relied on self-reported data and sampled only three groups with varying medical conditions, future research on patients with other health issues could be valuable. Tracking such outcomes as physiological measurements or frequency of attending rehabilitation sessions also could be of value, he said. “My hope is that people who use these surveys might realize that just as there is a science behind medical treatment, there is a science behind getting good survey reports,” Sanford said. “We want to make this available freely to anyone who wants to administer it.” *Co-researchers were Alannah Shelby Rivers, doctoral candidate in psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University; Dr. Tara L. Braun and Kelly P. Schultz, Division of Plastic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine; and Dr. Edward P. Buchanan, Division of Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and Division of Plastic Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit www.baylor.edu/artsandsciences.

Environmental Scientists Identify Most Pressing Issues Posed by Chemicals in the Environment in Europe

Environmental scientists have identified 22 key research questions surrounding the risks associated with chemicals in the environment in Europe. Chemicals released into the environment by human activity are resulting in biodiversity loss; increased natural hazards; threats to food, water and energy security; negative impacts on human health and degradation of environmental quality. Now an international study, coordinated by scientists from the University of York, Wageningen University and Baylor University, has identified the most important research questions that need to be answered to fill the most pressing knowledge gaps over the next decade. They include questions about which chemicals we should be most concerned about and where the hotspots of key contaminants are around the globe, as well as how we can develop methods to protect biodiversity and ecosystems. The research, which resulted from a recent "big questions" exercise involving researchers from across Europe, aims to serve as a roadmap for policymakers, regulators, industry and funders and result in a more coordinated approach from the European environmental science community to chemicals in the environment. “Our research has highlighted international scientists' research priorities and our key knowledge gaps when it comes to the risks and impacts of chemicals,” said one of the lead authors of the study Alistair Boxall, Ph.D., with the University of York’s environment department. “The study aims to help focus scientific effort on the questions that really matter and inform decisions about the type of research needed to update policies and regulations.” Bryan W. Brooks, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science and Biomedical Studies at Baylor University, who also coordinates a much larger global horizon scanning exercise, said the project is “intentionally transparent, inclusive of multiple sectors and multidisciplinary.” “Though this paper focuses on critical research needs for Europe, we partnered with the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry to perform similar studies in North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America,” Brooks said. “In fact, output from the Latin American study was recently published. This unprecedented exercise, which also includes a key partnership with the American Chemical Society in North America, is for the first time identifying global research priorities from academic, government and industry scientists and engineers to understand, avoid and manage adverse outcomes of chemicals in the environment.” A key suggestion in the report is that the basic and translational research is needed to advance robust assessments of chemical risks to the environment and human health. “These big research questions aim to reduce uncertainty during scientific evaluations of environmental contaminants and to advance innovation and sustainability through development of less hazardous chemicals to public health and the environment. Such research recommendations from our European colleagues are thus timely, necessary and internationally important if we are to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals,” Brooks said. Towards Sustainable Environmental Quality: Priority Research Questions for Europe is published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. It is one of six papers in a global horizon scanning study. ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines.

Children with Brain Tumors Who Undergo Radiation Therapy Are Less Likely to Recall Recent Personal Events than to Remember Pre-Treatment Happenings

‘The surprise, and the up side, is that episodic memories from before the children’s treatment were spared,’ Baylor researcher says Children with certain types of brain tumors who undergo radiation treatment are less likely to recall the specifics of events they experienced after radiation than to remember pre-treatment happenings, according to a Baylor University study comparing them to children with healthy brains. The finding is significant because children after treatment had less volume in the hippocampus — a part of the brain that plays an important role in memory. But while such a decrease usually is associated Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, brain injury, epileptic amnesia, encephalitis and aging, with those conditions both remote and recent memories are impaired, said lead author Melanie Sekeres, Ph.D., director of Sekeres Memory Laboratory at Baylor University. “The surprise, and the up side, is that episodic memories from before the children’s treatment were spared,” Sekeres said. For the study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers focused on “autobiographical memory,” which is linked to unique personal events and involves the recollection of emotional and perceptual details that allow a person to mentally re-experience the event, said Sekeres, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are used to treat the most common malignant brain tumor in children — a medulloblastoma. The reduced volume of the hippocampus is likely associated with radiation’s impact on the development of new cells in the nervous system, including the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus, or neurogenesis. “We know that these new cells play crucial roles in regulating memory and spatial learning, which is required to navigate. These treatments limit the brain’s ability to produce these new cells, which, in turn, limits the ability to form new memories,” Sekeres said. Research participants were 13 child survivors of brain tumors who had previously received radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment at least one year before the study. Twenty-eight healthy youths of similar ages (ranging from 7 to 18) also were recruited for the study, conducted with The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All the youths completed the Children’s Autobiographical Interview — a standardized memory test — and underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the brain. In individual interviews, children in both groups also were asked to recall memories from personal events that occurred at a specific time and place. Children were asked to recall a very old memory from an event before their radiation treatment (or an equally old memory for the healthy children) and a recent memory from within the past month. They were offered a list of events such as a birthday party, family trip, graduation and getting a pet but were told that they could choose another happening. The interview allowed children to freely recall without prompting before being asked general and specific questions about the event. “They have a hard time forming new, detailed memories,” Sekeres said. For example, when talking about a recent birthday party for a friend, they might tell how they met the friend and what that individual likes to do, but few specifics such as what they wore, the type of cake, what friends were there and what activities they did at the party, she said. “Such specific details might seem trivial, but these are precisely the kinds of details that allow us to vividly replay important events in our lives,” Sekeres said. “For most events, though, even healthy people forget a lot of specific details over time because we typically don’t need to retain all that incidental information. Some forgetting is normal and adaptive, and what we remember is the gist of an older event.” The patients were just as capable as healthy children of recalling these older memories, she said. But for children with brain tumors who have undergone radiation, the study suggested “deficits in their ability to either encode and/or retrieve highly detailed memories for personal events,” Sekeres said. “And those are the kind of memories that allow us to understand who we are and give us rich personal lives. “The study identifies an area of cognition that is inadvertently impacted by standard treatment, which has real consequences for the quality of life of the survivors. The physicians’ ultimate goal is to allow their patients to survive and to live as well as possible,” Sekeres said. “Although these treatments are often crucial in the effective management of the cancer, if the physicians and the family know there are these unintended side effects, that may be an additional factor to consider when exploring the treatment options.” ABOUT THE STUDY The study — “Impaired recent, but preserved remote, autobiographical memory in pediatric brain tumor patients” — was conducted with the Brain Tumor Program and the Program in Neurosciences and Mental Health at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Funding was provided through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s oldest and largest academic division, consisting of 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines. Visit College of Arts & Sciences.

Ethics Quandary? Women in PR More Apt to Seek Allies Before Giving Execs Advice

Women in public relations are more likely than men to seek allies and form coalitions before they give ethics counsel to senior leaders, while men are more likely to rely on presenting research, according to a Baylor University study. The study also showed that while senior public relations executives in the study overall tend to use “rational approaches,” such as research, case studies and appeals about what is right and lawful, success depends on building relationships with colleagues in other departments so that they have backup when ethical issues arise. “A PR person can be the conscience, but are they listened to? Are they respected? Are they at the table?” one woman said. “You can be doing everything right, but if nobody is listening to you, it really doesn’t matter a whole lot. Except that you can sleep at night.” The study — “The Use of Influence Tactics by Senior Public Relations Executives to Provide Ethics Counsel” — is published in the Journal of Media Ethics. The article highlights the need for younger PR practitioners to seek out senior PR executives as mentors before and during confrontation of ethics issues, said lead author Marlene Neill, Ph.D., assistant professor of journalism, public relations and new media in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences and author of the book “Public Relations Ethics: PR Pros Tell Us How to Speak Up and Keep Your Job.” “What inspired us to conduct this research were findings from a study I conducted in 2016 with Millennials working in public relations,” Neill said. “Survey results indicated that Millennials did not feel prepared to provide ethics counsel, were unlikely to speak up and did not even expect to face ethical dilemmas. We decided to conduct this study to instruct them how to do this effectively based on the experiences of senior executives working in our industry.” Researchers conducted through in-depth interviews with an elite selection of 55 public relations executives, many of them with Fortune 500 companies. They included members of the *Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) College of Fellows and The Arthur W. Page Society, with the combined sample averaging 33 years in PR. They represented 19 states and industries including government, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services and energy. Interviewees discussed ways to exert influence, ethics training and whether they are of value as an ethics counselor. “Some see it as being of little use; some recommend the PR practitioner take a modest role in encouraging consideration of ethics among multiple leaders,” Neill said. But others felt strongly that they should be an “organizational conscience” when they think company actions might pose an ethical dilemma with troubling consequences. One reason to do so is that without “boat-rocking” with straightforward tactics   an organization, some may turn outside the company by whistleblowing or leaking information to stakeholders, media or government officials. “Our study found that building relationships was critical for practitioners to ensure that other executives would listen to and respect their counsel,” Neill said. “That doesn’t mean they always won the debate, but relationship building has to do with building respect and trust.” While the interviewees’ most common approach to influencing was rational, followed by coalition-building, “some said they relied on persistence and assertiveness if they felt an issue was so objectionable they could not stay silent,” Neill said. “A few people turn to ingratiation, such as flattery.” When it comes to differences in how genders approach the role of ethics counselor, one reason women may recruit allies is that they tend to be outnumbered by men in the boardroom, Neill said. One woman said that “Going in force can help your case. But sometimes it can backfire . . . you know, if somebody wants to kill the messenger. But if several people come to you with the same messaging, I think you take notice.” Another woman said that she was “reprimanded for being so forthright. So, I didn’t do it that way anymore.” Some women were wary of using emotional appeals. Because of stereotypes about women being emotional in the workplace, “I probably erred in the other direction,” one woman said. Men, meanwhile, were more likely to prefer informational sources of power such as research and case studies, Neill said. But both genders said they ask questions, discuss, listen, share alternatives or solutions and recommend. A few men and women used more confrontational descriptions, such as saying, “We absolutely put our foot down” and “Tell them it’s wrong.” But in the case of women, “some of these more confrontational accounts were used in connection with allies or coalitions,” Neill said. In a few cases, men and women gave examples of resigning accounts or refusing to accept new clients if they decided the client’s business was not worth the ethical cost. Many interviewees said they had received ethics training through PRSA. A few said they had received training through their employer, college courses, personal study and mentors. A few pointed to their religious upbringing. Some of the more common ethics issues centered around communication, such as open disclosure of information, inaccurate information or sending fake letters to an editor. But others were business challenges, such as abusive behavior toward subordinates, misuse of public funds, smear campaigns and conflicts of interest. Neill said that because the study was limited to 55 individuals, a larger study and surveys of senior PR executives in other nations would be valuable. She and a colleague next plan to study to women’s leadership experiences. *PRSA College of Fellows is an exclusive group of approximately 350 senior professionals, each with a minimum of 20 years of experience in PR, Accreditation in Public Relations and recognition for distinguished careers. The Arthur W. Page Society is open by invitation to chief communications officers of Fortune 500 corporations and leading nonprofit organizations, chief executive officers of PR agencies and senior professors from business and communications schools. The study was funded by The Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication and supported by the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards and PRSA College of Fellows. Co-author is Amy Barnes, associate professor in the School of Mass Communications at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and co-author of “Public Relations Ethics: PR Pros Tell Us How to Speak Up and Keep Your Job.” ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 80 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions. ABOUT BAYLOR COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES The College of Arts & Sciences is Baylor University’s oldest and largest academic division, with 25 academic departments and seven academic centers and institutes. The more than 5,000 courses taught in the College span topics from art and theatre to religion, philosophy, sociology and the natural sciences. Faculty conduct research around the world, and research on the undergraduate and graduate level is prevalent throughout all disciplines.

Confederate monuments: How should America preserve and remember its history?

August 12 marks one year since a deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, when white nationalists showed up to protest the city's plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general. And one year later, the debates across America, particularly the South, continue about what should be done with Civil War-era monuments in town squares, public parks and other areas of high visibility. Most of the monuments were put in place decades after the end of the Civil War when whites in the South were reclaiming their dominant position socially and economically. So it’s not surprising that Confederate monuments are politically loaded. They were from the beginning, but the society in which the monuments find themselves has changed. What should be done with these monuments? Are they worthy of preservation? Should they be on display in a museum or discarded and forgotten? The pendulum is swinging very hard both ways on what to do, and that’s where the experts from the University of Mary Washington can help. Jason James, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, is a scholar of cultural memory who teaches a unique course called Practices of Memory, which focuses on the ways societies remember and forget the past through monuments and memorials, museums, film, and other media. This includes the debates over Confederate monuments and the commemoration of slavery. Jason is available to speak with media regarding this topic. Simply click on his icon to arrange an interview. Source:

Spike Lee's Cinematic Alchemy of Past and Present is a Warning About the Future

Nearly a year to the day after White Nationalists marched in Charlottesville, the film “BlacKkKlansman” is released. Spike Lee's film is both a representation of a real-life story of an African-American detective who infiltrated and exposed the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s and as an ideological vehicle for critique of our current social and political moment, says Matthew Hughey, associated professor of sociology at UConn. Together, “BlacKkKlansman” conveys a multi-part message. First, it is cinematic alchemy of the past and present—revealing what has and has not changed over the past half-century in order create a warning about the future. It recalls philosopher George Santayana’s saying “those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Second, the film eviscerates both American naiveté and intentional hypocrisy regarding racism and racial inequality. The film shines a bright light on the dark methods people use to dress up racism, nativist xenophobia, and hatred as “pride and patriotism,” and the madness deployed to rationalize police brutality and murder as little more than “law and order.” Third, and perhaps most importantly, the film deconstructs the “bad apple” theory of racism. Racism does not exist within the hood-wearing, swastika-sporting, epithet-spewing ignoramus alone, but exists in a systemic orchard that segregates and privileges whiteness economically, politically, and socially regardless of individual intention, worldview, or behavior. In the end, Lee’s film leads us to the conclusion that if “we are all Charlottesville” then “we are all Klansman,” too, says Hughey. Source: