There’s been debate for a while over whether racism should be considered a mental illness/symptom on a par with, say, delusions of grandeur.
Suppose a pill were invented that would cause a person to lose the ability to perceive race or ethnicity. Suppose further that the pill was approved by the FDA, meaning that it had met the FDA’s criteria for safety and efficacy, yet recognizing that there is no guarantee that bad side effects would not become apparent later, as in the case of Vioxx.
What would or should happen? Would it be legal or right for a court to require someone to take the pill? What if you heard your kid telling racist jokes? Would you give him the pill?
Anyway. Race is kind of a stupid category, and I see no benefit to perceiving it, really. Ethnicity, on the other hand, covers everything that makes one group distinctive from the next, including fashion, food, language, music… why on earth would you want to get rid of the ability to perceive that? Now, a pill to remove the prejudices that make someone assume without evidence that one ethnicity is inferior, that I could support.
ETA: No, don’t give the kid the pill. Try to find out what prompts the telling of racist jokes — there are a lot of reasons beyond pure racism, though please don’t think I’m justifying racist jokes. One-size-fits-all cures are usually a bad idea.
I think there was a movie that dealt with this sort of philosophical issue. Not specifically addressing racism per se, but the idea of using science/medicine to condition a person’s natural, albeit destructive behavior. Had something to do with clocks…
There have been many movies based around this concept. As far as I know, none of them end well.
Here’s a bit from one of my favorites:
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.
I bet such a pill to “cause a person to lose the ability to perceive race or ethnicity” could be distilled form the blood of Stephen Colbert, a man who cannot see race, but is told that he is white.