- Fri Nov 22, 2013 9:00 am
#32698
Racism is easy to understand. More difficult to remediate.
Studies of young children has uncovered the roots of racism. As young children grow up they show little preference for one individual over another. Later they clearly learn to prefer those who treat them nicely. They also engage in quite reasonable preference for the moral over the nasty. Then they start to prefer the familiar friendly person even when they are nasty over the stranger even when they are moral and develop a preference to see the unfamiliar person punished when they are in conflict with a familiar friendly person even when morality is on the side of the stranger. The basis for racism.
Then comes the divergence. Socialization and learning of moral values. Some people live is racist environments and have strong influences to remain racist. Some people have low capabilities of socialization and remain racist even though they live in fundamentally moral social settings. Then, some people socialize with strong moral values in concert with or despite their social surroundings. There is great genetic and social influence in humans as well as all other annals. Their is a full spectrum from more those strongly influenced by socialization and community and others soley interested in themselves and filled by fear of others. All this is based in what is clearly strong genetic influence modified by our socialization into a community.
The only real problem arises when a community accepts the vile and anti-social racism that is in many ways very natural to all animals. The individual holds great responsibility for their racism, but the community in which they live holds equal responsibility for accepting that racism and not speaking out against it. Not speaking out gives tacit approval for this anti-social behavior.
Yes, I am sure there are many more details, but these are the basics. They are basic to our genetics and adaptations for survival in much smaller more uniform tribal environments where racism contributes to survival. In these more violent and primitive environments racism contributes to survival of your own kind. In our mega scale societies racism causes conflict and inefficiencies. It's a very natural choice. When the total community is the 200 people of your village, racism makes a great deal of pragmatic sense for survival and property of the community. In our mega scale interlinked society, racism is strongly counter productive and irrational for the survival and prosperity of the community. Racism may have some myopic small scale local advantages, but it clearly reduces the prosperity and survivability of everyone in the society. That has always been true. Still, it is very hard for some to see beyond their own local "zero-sum" view of the world. Genetics plays a role. Lack of education and lack of proper socialization plays a role. To accept racism as bad requires a higher level of function and perspective where the larger scale pragmatic reality of the world trumps the tiny scale long lost primitive perspective view of the world. It's easy to be a racist when you don't see your dependency on those who are far away and different than you.
Racism in our current world is a maladaption to the mega scale interlinked world that is our reality in favor of a world that no longer exists. A clear indication that the racist is incapable of understanding his environment or poorly educated in the pragmatic skills needed to optimally survive in our mega scale social environment. Not so different to the more physical case of sickle cell anemia. Having sickle cell anemia kills you. In more primitive times, being a carrier for sickle cell anemia protected you from malaria, not having a sickle cell anemia gene killed you by malaria. In a society that can detect and treat malaria and can reduce malaria cases by controlling standing water and mosquitoes, the advantages of sickle cell anemia disappear, as do the advantages of racism.
Racism, it's completely natural, and now a clear maladaption to our complex, mega-scale environment. A failure of modern socialization to control more primitive compulsions that harm the racist, their target, and the well being and prosperity of our society.
- By elklindo69
- By uvgotmale970