Obama's Neuroscience

David Brooks has a controversial OpEd column in the New York Times celebrating advances in social cognitive neuroscience. He highlights studies getting at the physical indications of prejudice, and ends by suggesting that these indications of how hard wired our prejudices are need to be taken into consideration by policy wonks in Washington.
I'm not sure who he has in mind, but politicians are already well-aware of prejudice and how to deal with it. To take one example, Obama is a past master of getting inside people's prejudices and turning them inside out. He refers to the family members with their unconscious prejudice, like his white grandmother or the fatherly figure of Reverend Wright, as folks we love and respect despite their old-fashioned prejudices. This tactic enlarges our group to the one that is tolerating an elder deserving of respect, but whose values we've outgrown. Many of us can easily relate to putting up with an outmoded prejudice for the sake of family harmony.
Another deft example was the "beer summit". When a trivial incident hits the headlines, with passions for black pride, respect for the individual, respect for authority cross and make headlines, Obama invites the guys over for a beer. And as silly as that seems, in retrospect it put the trivial incident in perspective. The group is no longer your race, the upper class professor, the police, the working man, but simply some guys who might have a beer and talk about how the Red Sox are doing. And there are groups in office pools and bars all over the country that are more interested in getting along, having a beer, talking about how the day went, or how the team is doing, than they are about worrying about the color of the guys sitting around the table.
I wish we'd thought of that strategy here in Pittsburgh for the recent G20 summit. The security details for all the heads of state created a virtual "green zone" downtown, making it what some wag called "Baghdad on the Monongahela". Thousands of police were brought in to confront violent protestors that didn't materialize. The town should have treated it like a police convention, put them up at hotels and provided them with coupons for local hotels and amusements to encourage them to come back with their families. If we'd paid as much attention to welcoming the police as we did to welcoming the heads of state, it would have really paid off for the local tourist industry.