Is Racism Natural?
Seems like a pretty simple question, but I recently had a debate with my friend about it. I said it's an evolutionary tendency...and he says it's an invention of society. I want you guys to to what you do best: Find as much evidence as you can for either side and duke this out. Here's what I've got so far...
http://layscience.net/?q=node/152
http://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/baby-monkey-faces/
Yes, every single person is prejudice to some degree whether or not they want to admit it or even realize it. We all prefer people who are more similar to us. Numerous experiments have been conducted on prejudice and people exhibit certain unintentional behaviors which clearly illustrate contemporary prejudice to the trained eye.
It is a natural reaction that may be influenced, but not necessarily created by surroundings.
P.S. Racism is NOT by any means created by man. There are supporting studies and evidence that proves that even animals (like mockingbirds, squirrels, and etc) prefer their own kind, or their own kin. They will feed babies who are closely related but neglect those who are not. That is just one example of non-human related "prejudice."
In the early days of humanity, racism was a good thing because we were tribal animals. If you saw something, or someone to be more exact different than you, they weren't part of the pack, and proved to be a threat to you and your family. Thats where racism began, so we hated other sub-divisons of humanity.
http://layscience.net/?q=node/152
http://www.inklingmagazine.com/articles/baby-monkey-faces/
Survival. In general, attractive people have more "normal" features and therefore better genes. By staring up with your big blue eyes at the hottest person in the room, you are assuming that's your mommy, or at least hoping that turning on the charm will make her adopt you. Being raised by someone healthy gives you a better chance of living to see your first birthday. The baby-racism makes sense as well from an evolutionary perspective: It's important as you get older to know who all the people in your tribe are, but that other tribe down the way? According to the studies, all you need to know is they don't look like you. Their individual features? Irrelevant in your tiny, racist baby mind.
Comments
Secondly, I think it's natural up to a certain extent. I definitely don't think it's an "invention of society", since that's not how the concept of society works (at least for me): if person A dislikes blacks or hispanics or asians because of their ethnicity it is A's decision and not society's. Even if you were to say that A dislikes these ethnicities because of what he sees on the media or what the people around him are like, it still is A's individual conduct that is racist because of what he as an individual has made of what he sees on the media and his surroundings. You can't blame such a diffuse concept as "society" for A's fault.
Kids themselves though can be fairly mean. I know that here in East Asia, in countries with very high rates of homogenity, kids are fairly discriminatory and unforgiving of children different from them. They get beat up, excluded from activities, bullied, etc. If I were to marry a local here, I certainly would not send my halfbreed offspring to public schools. But then again, is this because kids learn the value of their race at an early age in school, or is it something deeper than that?
Does it happen as much in the US in elementary school? I spent my elementary and middle school years in Minneapolis and Dallas, both of which are fairly mixed. My high school years in Iowa were very... Aryan. Like 2/3 of my classes had kids with blue eyes and/or blonde hair.
I dunno, I feel like it's a bit off to fully discount social mechanisms (media, family, religion, education) like this. A lot of it DOES come from the individual, to be sure, but I think the way you're setting it up here downplays the extraordinary external influence that every person is under from the moment they're born. It's pretty much impossible for someone to grow up and THEN make completely a priori decisions about what the world around her is like. Everyone's view on the world, even the most 'enlightened,' is influenced by what they were taught as they were raised.
Obviously anyone can overcome it, but a lot of people don't, so I think that thinking of it as a mixture of human instinct to group things according to common characteristics and influence from certain social constructs is probably the most accurate.
Of course, the SHAPE of racism, I think you could argue, is pretty much set by what we've seen and been told as we've grown up. I don't think it's in any way instinctive for a white person to think that all Asians are good at math, and so on and so forth.