Is Racism Natural?

I don't think racism is natural. It never remotely occured to me as a kid in the multi-culti neighborhood I was in. I did not reel back when first meeting a black child only to be educated that despite his skin color he was like me and OK.

Further, racism generally comes with texts, ideas, rumours, stories, jokes, speeches. You have to get people to think that way. You have to work at it. And parents, generally, need to get that manipulation train rolling.

It takes a lot of propaganda to not see a human as a human.

 

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Racism is a learned behavior.It starts with superiority complexes that result from ones upbringing,associations and lack of confidence.Racism usually results from individuals with a subconcious unawareness feeling of inferiority.From the beginning of times to now babies know not much!!!.What makes up racism is the upbringing whether taught to hate or feeling out of place or weaker than individuals.

For example

It was a heated debate surrounding why men of African decent tend to have superior physical strength,stamina,speed(not always but common).That is due to the muscle twitch fibers and the bone structure being some 15-20 in some cases 30 percent thicker than many of other backgrounds.That is enough to cause a male/female of another race to feel inferior therefore developing a prejudice,dislike for that individual which turns to using what he/she is superior at and using it to place yourself over them.

For blacks,if you have whites who are highly educated in the burbs the ghetto which has a high percentage of drop-outs can develop a feeling of inferiority which turns to using what he/she is superior at and using it to feel better than the individual they are unaware they feel inferior towards.

That is not innate at all.It is your upbringing,associations and i feel alot of parents or legal guardians can do alot better with raising our young and many have which is why so many of our youth are growing in societies without the prejudice feelings.They see human beings and are often confused when they observe someone disliking someone else because the color of there skin.I know plenty of white people who have become outraged that there children have approached them confused as to why someone they met expressed a dislike for another person because of skin color.They do not teach there children hate at all and do not want them associating with individuals who thrive on hate.

 

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If only... Here on Earth our souls are tested. If we all worked together... Then it wouldn't be Earth and everything would be easy, we'd have to rename it "Heaven Haven."

:shrug:

 

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Stereotyping is.

 

The "kids aren't racist" argument doesn't prove anything, that's like saying it's unnatural for cheetahs to not have a big white mohawk down their back because the cubs do.
It could be a natural instinct that manifests later in life, like the urge to have sex, or countless other things.
Instincts don't have to be exhibitted in babies, that's inane bullshit perpetuated by people who don't understand how instincts work.

It wouldn't be wise evolutionarily speaking for a small child to be racist, they can't fight for shit so it will only cause them trouble, even a baby lion will lick your face and play with you. It's still their natural instinct to eat you when they get older, partially learned as well. Instinct and learned behaviour aren't mutually exclusive, for mammals instincts naturally require training and practice to reach their full rightfull natural level of prominence.

Ofcourse it is natural for people, which are very visual animals, to use how different other people look from them and their family to subconsciously decide whether they are to be trusted or not.
It's something most of us try to suppress, and an instinct that might even be very much shrivelled back in many people to a vestigial nub.
But racism is still definately a natural attribute, not something invented by some new age equivalent of 'satan' pervading society (what do we call satan these days? Oh that's right, "the media").

Just look at whenever people don't care about being PC, how they act. IE, look at prisons, there is not a prison on this earth that isn't divided by racial lines. Why? because they don't give a shit any more about appropriate behaviour for decent society, they've regressed to a natural animal state, and what we as humans do in these circumstances is find people that look like us to be in a tribe with and establish rivalries with people who don't look like us.

Not only is this the natural behaviour of humans, it's undoubtedly the nature of living organisms in general, it's the behavioural mechanism which spurs speciation. 1 population splits in two but remain the same species, what keeps them separated long enough to eventually become different species would be a natural inhibition to mix with those of the same species which are different from themselves.

 

Many instinctive fears are present in children. I don't think the mohawk analogy or the sexual interest ones work as counterarguments. Teenagers have gone through changes specifically in their sexual systems and there are good reasons for very young children not to be mature sexually. I can see no reason why fears around race - or, literally, differences in appearance - would be delayed.

Natural fears are to help one avoid danger. Children should also be afraid of 'dangerous' things. It was at 10 or older when some of the propaganda began confusing me about other races. There is no reason for nature to delay a fear like that. Children can run away.

This seems like an argument for nurture.

When I've been to places where few or no whites had been, the reaction was curiosity. Sure, some caution. No hate - and hell, rumous should have put them on their guard.

Prison is not a natural environment. The amount of culture that goes into prison culture is tremendous. It is not as if the closing of the prison doors eliminates culture.

Well, tell it to the shapers of the miscegination laws, cause they sure thought nature might bring those races together. And time is arguing against your hypothesis. I see mixing everywhere.

 

This...was a prodigious necro.

IMO racism is "natural" in the sense that we are naturally inclined to form groups and then bind ourselves to them. "Race" is a particularly convenient group because it tends to be so obvious.

My suspicion, though, is that kids raised entirely amongst members of another race would identify *that* race as their peer group and be racist to members of his own race. As such, the "racism" is more a way we draw distinctions between "our people" and "outsiders" and we tend to react negatively to the latter. We then invent complicated rationalizations to justify our position, because "funny feelings" are not something we like to rely on.

I doubt that we have it genetically coded in us to defend the promulgation of our race (on the theory, presumably, that those genes are "more like mine"), since "race" is not all that old in the grand evolutionary scheme.

 

We have a need to belong.

 

Wouldn't 'racism' from a natural or evolutionary stand point be self defeating. If people have a natural aversion to people who are genetically different than they are? I thought that's what all of the studies with women preferring certain mates by smell. the men that differed the most from the woman genetically was more likely to have a pleasing smell to the woman or why siblings generally do not find one another sexually attractive, because they carry most of the same genes (there's a whole bunch of other studies like this too). So if nature prefers diversity, racism does nothing to further it. If you only mated within your race chances are you would all eventually share the same genes which decreases the chance for natural selection and all that jazz.

 

We have a need to belong. I'm not sure how much sense that makes from an evolutionary stand point, but it makes some sense. We try to be around others like us for something, probably about survival.

 

If only... Here on Earth our souls are tested. If we all worked together... Then it wouldn't be Earth and everything would be easy, we'd have to rename it "Heaven Haven."

Our souls are only tested if we give into it. After all our conscious mind is so much more powerful that we give it, we could change it at any time if we only knew the power we have.

Earth would be easy? I'm not sure in what way you mean, no challenges? If that's what you mean then yes challenges can be good, but it doesn't mean they have to be a race issue, after all we're just talking about pigment or a particular lifestyle, its just down to understanding and respecting differences amongst the diversity that nature has given us. To me some of the posts on here saying that racism is natural is a bit of a contradiction as nature is diverse, its more to do with our conditioning through education and lifestyle that we are often ignorant or unaccepting of other races.

 

I remember first meeting my sister's boyfriend, who was black (I'm white), aged about 2/3.

My first thought was 'Oh wow, he's got really pretty skin.'

 

Racism is natural for morons. Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas are black geniuses and I could show you some white people on this board who are dumber than amoebas.

 

Racism is a clever foil against which a number of social programs and legislation are used by post-colonial Western governments in an effort to integrate and homogenize their populations after Empire, mainly to meet the needs of the expanding free market.

One should never make the mistake, however, that anti-racist sentiment in the West equates to some now irreversible socio-historical course that we are on. In times of economic hardship such sentiments will rapidly evaporate, demonstrating their shallow and insincere origins.

 

I agree.

Until children are socialized they are little more than animals. They will shit and piss everywhere just like any animal - they have to be broken in through potty training.

Discrimination is the hallmark of civilized man, without it we are little more than savages.

 

Discrimination based on race is a product of society, not an instinctual human trait.

That's why there is so little of it today compared to 60 years ago; neighborhoods today are far more multi-cultural.

 

Races were created by nature, not society.

When a pale skinned person goes in the sun his skin may burn, regardless of society's opinions.

Now, this is society's doing.

 

100 years from now there will be no such thing as race.

 

I am not sure if this was facetious or straight but I think it works better as the former and it had me laughing.