Exactly. Racism–the specific system of constructing those divides based on skin shades and certain perceived feature sets–that is transmitted culture, not innate.
Definitely.
Sure, no one’s perfect. Numerous clearly irrational beliefs continue to manifest in my thoughts and, more often than I’d like, my actions. But with sustained effort such beliefs can be quieted and indeed overcome. It thus confuses me to find someone who genuinely believes that racist thoughts are wrong but for whom these “lizard brain” thoughts stubbornly and regularly persist. In the absence of psychiatric disorder, unwanted — and continually countered — thoughts should eventually dissipate.
Well, I deny latent racism at least to the extent that I can diagnose it. No voice in my head pops up to squawk “miscegenation is wrong!!!” when I see an interracial couple. (A voice in my head does note incongruity when I see my African brother-in-law with my sister, but that’s not because she’s white — it’s because he’s waaay out of her league.) I can’t see how this serves to ensure the persistence of racism.
Can you really not imagine how it might be an evolutionary advantage to fear/hate people who look different than your own tribe?
Fucking lizards, they come over here, take our jobs, sleep with our women, and they don’t even bother to learn our language. Bunch of cunts.
Anyone taken this word association test before? I did a long time ago so I forget exactly what their categories are but it said something like that I was mild or moderately racist 
And I love black people (not all of them, just my daughter and boyfriend really. And Donald Glover.)
This struck me as way too funny.
No.
But I have lots of black friends. So leave me outta this.
Yes they are. You are. What I am trying to get at is that you should examine your own head. You DO have racist thoughts - don’t think you’re perfect. If you don’t examine them, they can persist.
It may seem benign. It could be something like if you look at a guy and think, “He’s Mexican, I bet he’s a hard worker”. But that’s still racist. You ain’t perfect. And the fact that you would dismiss the idea so casually means to me that you haven’t even thought about it.
Which is the worst kind of racism. In Obama’s run for his first term for the presidency you would here some people say “He speaks so well”. They thought they were paying him a compliment. They thought they weren’t being racist.
But they were.
This thread is about self reflection. Examining the imperfect thoughts in your own head. If your claim is that you never have imperfect thoughts, I call bullshit.
Why does it have to be transmitted? Two different groups have a misunderstanding, you think: “those damn Moabites (or whatever) don’t know how to clean up their sacrifices.” You don’t need someone from your tribe to teach you that. Just like the tree frog knows that the bullfrog is fucking trouble, it may cause survival in the long run. But with human society, it can be maladaptive.
Ah. The IAT. To clarify: “failing” the IAT does not say that you are racist. It can also mean that you are aware of stereotypes. I’d bet Spike Lee would finish with a bias of black+bad. So at worst, failing should mean a self-examination, not either feeling guilty or going full hog and buying a bunch of white sheets.
I mean, I know that, but I didn’t remember what terminology they used.
My best friend took it and got no bias though. Well, that’s what she said, I didn’t actually see her take it. So maybe she’s just a racist liar, I don’t know.
I’m going to need you to explain this. Because it sounds like your saying you can’t pay black people a compliment ever.
How so?
Call bullshit all you want. My first friends as a kid were our neighbours in Scotland; a Sikh husband and his British wife with their lovely kids. It never occurred to me that race was any kind of an issue.
At the age of 3 I moved to Northern Ireland and lived in a Protestant neighbourhood. I never really understood why Catholics were different, but I went along with the other kids and did silly things like hide in the bushes and throw stones at the Catholics, because that’s what I was supposed to do.
At the age of 6 I moved to Canada and was really an outsider. I had to try to conform and fit in with the culture. And lose my accent, that kids liked to ridicule me for.
For all of these reasons and for really decent and non-racist parents I have never had any racist thoughts in my life. I have been the outsider looking in. I have been the last kid picked because I didn’t understand baseball, or hockey, or football. I tried my damnedest to conform.
I could never, ever look at another human and judge him or her based on skin colour, religion, or ethnicity. The thought has never entered my head. People are people. We all want the same things in life. There are idiots in all cultures. There are decent folks in all cultures. I don’t know which you are until I get to know you personally, and your skin colour, race and religion have absolutely no bearing upon my judgement.
People congratulate black people all the time for being articulate even if they’re just average. Which makes it sound like they think the default for black people is not to speak well. Of course, some black people actually are articulate, but it’s used the offensive way so often that it still has that connotation.
Because tribes competing for limited resources. Also, not f’n with things you know nothing about tends to keep one alive longer.
You seem a pretty strong authority on what’s in other peoples heads.
I know there’s a stereotype that black people aren’t eloquent, but I don’t think that means that complementing Obama on his speaking abilities is racist. For one, he is a very good speaker. Not just “good”, I mean he’s probably one of the best public speakers at present period. Additionally, you have to remember that this complement is somewhat influenced by the fact that Bush Jr was considered a very poor speaker, and thus the comment can also be seen as a comparison of him to Bush.
But is it evolutionary?
Hey now!
Lizards have a hard time enunciating many English phonemes.