Why does racism exist?

[SQAAD]

Why does racism exist? Why some people are racist?

I really don't get it.. I don't understand what drives racism.

[peachboy]

Racism is not the problem. Race is the problem.

When people truly understand that personal identity is an illusion, all of this will fall away

The trick is to identify with the player, not the videogame character. But a lot of people don't understand that just yet.

[commie]

Racism is simply a form of essentialism. Essentialism comes so naturally to us that you did one in your very short OP.

But what you call racism is probably something else. English speakers usually construct some very bad thing in their mind, safely distant from what they are or do and call that racism.

And peachboy: the character has no race either. That's not the issue.

Edited October 25, 2020 by commie

[PurpleTree]

it comes from tribalism

[Thestarguitarist14]

1 minute ago, PurpleTree said:

it comes from tribalism

You beat me to it.  Look at other countries.  Japan does not have the systemic racism that the United States does.  However they very much still have their issues, especially being a homogeneous country.  Like when that half Japanese/half American woman beat Serena Williams, she was accepted as Japanese.  But before that she was seen as a hafu as is anyone who isn’t full Japanese is.

[PurpleTree]

3 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

My hypothesis:

Because ages ago it was good for you if the people you hang around with was built the same way as you (evolved/adapted to the same environment which you live in) , because then they are more likely to survive in your environment: good for your survival. And breeding with differently adapted people would've been bad because that would slow down the process of our bodies and psyches evolving/adapting to the local environment.

Our bodies and probably psyches too must adapt to the local environment as fast as possible. If a kenyan and greenlander would mate, how good would the offspring survive in Kenya or in Greenland? Not good at all. So of course nature has made us dislike people who is different to us.

That wouldn't really explain why shias/sunnis fight, protestants/catholics fought, people of different sports teams fight etc.

it's all just tribalism which is ingrained in us but we don't need to/shouldn't feed it. And with different "races" the tribe thing is just very visible.

7 minutes ago, Thestarguitarist14 said:

You beat me to it.  Look at other countries.  Japan does not have the systemic racism that the United States does.  However they very much still have their issues, especially being a homogeneous country.  Like when that half Japanese/half American woman beat Serena Williams, she was accepted as Japanese.  But before that she was seen as a hafu as is anyone who isn’t full Japanese is.

Japan has been notoriously racist in the second world war and also lighter japanese from the north have been very racist towards darker japanese from the south, they haven't looked at them as real japanese and as lazy etc. for most of the time. I also know a white guy who lived in Japan and speaks japanese fluently, has a Japanese wife etc. and he told us that Japanese people in the public transport talk about him racist all the time because they think he doesn't understand it.

[PurpleTree]

1 minute ago, Mikael89 said:

Well, why does tribalism exist then?

Why wouldn't it? Probably for safety, community, mating, finding food, raising children etc. reasons

Wolves, a lot of Apes, Elephants, Birds, Dolphins etc. live in groups/tribes too.

We have lived like that for hundreds of thousands of years

[silene]

26 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

Our bodies and probably psyches too must adapt to the local environment as fast as possible. If a kenyan and greenlander would mate, how good would the offspring survive in Kenya or in Greenland? Not good at all. So of course nature has made us dislike people who is different to us

Historically yes I think you have a point, but now with modern technology we rely less on physical evolution.. I can wear sunscreen in Kenya, or take vitamin D supplement in Greenland, for example. Mixed / inter-raciaial relationships are now common and accepted in industrialised countries. 

Edited October 25, 2020 by silene

[Carl-Richard]

Fear of the unknown.

[silene]

1 minute ago, Mikael89 said:

Of course, but our hardwired programming by nature doesn't change immediately. It lags behind bigtime.

So true, sadly, but racism becomes a problem in stage orange societies which just need good educated workers and race is irrelevant to profit. Immigration becomes a hot potato between blue and orange. 

[PurpleTree]

2 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

But why is it better for safety, community, mating, etc?

Who's stronger a group or one person? who finds more food a group or one person? etc.

 

 

[PurpleTree]

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Fear of the unknown.

hard to say if let's say hitler was really scared of the jews or if he just hated them and thought of them as lower and basically vermin etc.

[Carl-Richard]

34 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

Because ages ago it was good for you if the people you hang around with was built the same way as you (evolved/adapted to the same environment which you live in) , because then they are more likely to survive in your environment: good for your survival.

You didn't really have a choice. All the people you would ever meet looked totally like yourself.

 

35 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

And breeding with differently adapted people would've been bad because that would slow down the process of our bodies and psyches evolving/adapting to the local environment.

All humans who live inside the same tribe are for all intents and purposes equally adapted to their environment biologically speaking. The type of adaptation you're talking about would require some drastic genetic dissimilarities, and I think the probability of those encounters would be too low to warrant an introduction of genes associated with assortative mating into the gene pool.

 

52 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

Our bodies and probably psyches too must adapt to the local environment as fast as possible. If a kenyan and greenlander would mate, how good would the offspring survive in Kenya or in Greenland? Not good at all. So of course nature has made us dislike people who is different to us.

What are the odds that a kenyan and a greenlander would ever meet? Extremely low. So low infact that I see no way that there would arise an adaptive mechanism that would account for the potential fitness disadvantages (that is also an assumption) of that encounter.

[Carl-Richard]

35 minutes ago, PurpleTree said:

hard to say if let's say hitler was really scared of the jews or if he just hated them and thought of them as lower and basically vermin etc.

A theory is that he called them vermin because he associated them with something disgusting, and he was known for having a very strong disgust-response (he liked having things clean). Disgust, fear and hate are different sides of the same coin (let's call it "defilements") . You fear, hate and find disgusting that which you're not used to. "That which you're not used to" inherently carries a dimension of the unknown within it. All defilements stem from the fear of the unknown, and it's directly tied to survival. It's what keeps you alive, and it's why you suffer.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

@Carl-Richard Maybe. But people did migrate surprisingly long distances surprisingly early. I think.

Then maybe their local adaptation wasn't such a big deal after all?

[Claymoree]

Why any hate, beliefs  exist, you find reasons and put labels on person, group that is similar, connected in some way. 

You believing that Right wing is uneducated, racists and so on is the same racism. 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Claymoree

[Carl-Richard]

1 minute ago, Mikael89 said:

@Carl-Richard For long term I think it was. For short term not so much. A human even survives for about 1.5 minutes unprotected in outer space.

And when different races met each other one of them immediately annihilated or enslaved the other one, roughly speaking, I think.

I believe the local adaptation that you're talking about is often more culturally determined rather than genetically determined.

When humans migrate, they would maybe have to learn new survival techniques (problem solving, tool-making etc.), but that doesn't require much action at the level of the genes, unlike say the adaptive radiation that happens with the introduction of new a species of frogs to an island.

Nonetheless, genetic adaptation to the point of constructing novel phenotypes that confer a drastic environment-specific advantage usually takes millions of years. Homo sapiens appeared only 200 000 years ago. All humans are basically equally adapted to their environment at the level of genes, atleast in a behavioral sense.

[Gesundheit]

A simple misunderstanding that kept snowballing for years, decades, and then centuries, and then eras.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Gesundheit

[Gesundheit]

1 hour ago, Mikael89 said:

But why divide the big group into smaller tribes?

Great question ??

Probably because of people like Leo who differentiate themselves from others and call them dumb.

[PurpleTree]

8 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

A theory is that he called them vermin because he associated them with something disgusting, and he was known for having a very strong disgust-response (he liked having things clean). Disgust, fear and hate are different sides of the same coin (let's call it "defilements") . You fear, hate and find disgusting that which you're not used to. "That which you're not used to" inherently carries a dimension of the unknown within it. All defilements stem from the fear of the unknown, and it's directly tied to survival. It's what keeps you alive, and it's why you suffer.

not really imo. you can find cockroaches disgusting and being used to them, they not "the unknown"