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It's almost as if racism is inherently illogical.
Exactly
It's almost as if people from the 60's needed an absolutely ridiculous metaphor to drive home how illogical racism is. Reminds me of the Hutu vs Tutsi scene from Hotel Rwanda.
I mean not really. If you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint it's perfectly logical.
Outside groups are dangerous. That's true even within racial groups. Now add that not only are they outsiders they don't look anything like your group. That's another layer of outsiders being dangerous. Not only are they outsiders but they don't look like you.
It's a leftover piece of evolution that helped humans survive. Protect your own and everyone else can get fucked. Especially if they're different.
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Agreed. Some level of xenophobia is expected though. That’s especially true if you were to think that the other tribes phenotypes are reminiscent of disease or sickness. I’m pretty sure that what you’re pointing out about wars starting with land isn’t so much because humans want to protect their land but because settling in one spot makes one more xenophobic by nature. Your breeding group is now smaller so phenotypes become distinct. Which means that encountering outsiders or wanderers would increase that xenophobic response. Prior to that you’d have a more or less homogenous group within anywhere you could reach which means that xenophobia makes far less sense as you cannot always identify “tribe”.
To sum up what I’m saying: over time as complexity began, cooperation between phenotypes lessened and competition between distinct phenotypes emerged. This could be what drives a lot of human xenophobic behavior, especially in the modern day. As we developed language this got even worse as xenophobia now includes a language barrier. Meaning that outsiders marked themselves as such even if they held the same phenotypes. This led to a lot of tribalism and history has not evolved from there.
(Just a layman but I did some reading and thinking)
Hate is learned, not inherent.
Fear of the unknown is almost universal in our species.
Fear is inherent, but not hate. Racism is hate.
Fear is one bad incident away from hate.
I'm not disagreeing that racism is wrong. It's abhorrent and a gleaming example of the fact our species hasn't evolved outside of technology.
But it's ridiculously easy to be racist. It's so fuckin easy it's crazy. It's like getting addicted to drugs. One instance is all it could take. One bad experience.
This is coming from someone who used to be racist. Because my first experience with a black person as a child was horrible. A grown ass man screaming at a child due to a misunderstanding but I was white so I had to be a racist.
It took a long time to get over that and realize why it happened but in between all I could think was black people are mean bastards because they think all white people are racist.
Fear is one bad incident away from hate.
Sure. But that doesn't mean it is a logical from an evolutionary standpoint.
It took a long time to get over that and realize why it happened but in between all I could think was black people are mean bastards because they think all white people are racist.
I am glad you got past that.
Sure. But that doesn't mean it is a logical from an evolutionary standpoint.
That's exactly what it means.
If you're already terrified of something and then something bad happens because of that something it's going to create resentment and therefore hatred.
Fear and hate follow the same vein. It's easy to hate what you fear simply because it makes you afraid.
You're giving "race" as an arbitrary social construct special status above other characteristics. Height, hair color, etc.
You're presupposing that race is more significant than these.
Furthermore, the flexibility of racial terms like "white" to include or exclude people like Italians and Irish over the decades also goes to show that it's arbitrary and malleable.
Like religion, it's just been a tool for political control. Conservatives love in groups and out groups, this is just the common one of the day.
Dude, just say you’re afraid of black people and leave the rest of us humans out of it.