To be fair, I think that what he meant was not that everyone thinks white people are superior, but that everyone thinks their own race is superior.
Here’s the quote from the article:
Stunned, the students let out a gasp before asking him to confess he is a racist, to which he responds by reiterating that he is not alone in thinking that his race is superior. “I think everybody thinks that, they’re just not honest about it,”
This was still a pretty stupid thing to say in a classroom, and the teacher may indeed actually be a racist. But, unless I’m the one who’s reading it wrong, it’s not as stupid as the way I first read your description.
Agreed. I don’t think he was preaching white supremacy. He was trying to normalize racism though, which is bad enough.
It would be one thing if he said it along the lines of, “Racism and prejudice are natural human inclinations and we need to recognize that and try to overcome it.” In that case I’d say that he’s giving a good and positive message to his students. But he is saying, “I’m racist but so is everyone else.” That’s just excusing racism.
I know this is Texas, but it’s Austin and I’d be surprised if there were no consequences from the school district. I’m sure the state government couldn’t care less.
There’s a difference between the two statements; and between the first statement and the wording the article presents him as saying. I think it’s possible that he doesn’t realize the difference; which is a problem in itself, especially when he’s trying to teach children on the subject.
I am not sure that I would be onboard with a statement even as bland as that. There is some evidence that toddlers get along fine with other toddlers that are clearly very different from them (but hey, what do toddlers know). In the sense that “natural human inclination” tends to imply “hardwired”, the assertion seems to me to be blazingly wrong, not to mention excusing racism as inherent to our makeup.
I will concede, though, that the natural human tendency to form social groups that trend toward hierarchies, the development of otherism is often a typical result of our social behavior. Otherism is, however, still a learned behavior, and while it is deeply embedded in our societies, it is also severable therefrom. At least, theoretically.
I grew up in a very multicultural neighborhood. Racism was foreign to me. My group of friends when I was a kid looked like something that would have been artificially constructed by a casting company trying to ensure diverse representation. So yes, I agree with the idea that people aren’t born racist.
On the other hand, we are hardwired to gravitate toward people we have things in common with. It’s instinctual and rational. If you share common interests you are more likely to become friends or to become romantically paired. If someone grew up in the same area as you, is a similar age, etc. you may have shared experiences and can relate better. Those are significant similarities that lead to more meaningful relationships.
You can’t always tell whether a person has those significant similarities though upon first viewing them. So a human is inclined to latch onto superficial things like gender, skin color, a style of dress, etc. That’s natural. Race can fall under that as well. (That’s the sort of thing you have to watch out for; not judging people by appearance alone, whether it’s along racial lines or not.)
When racism gets to the stage of becoming fear and hatred, I believe that has to be learned behavior. That comes from how a person was raised, or some experience in the past that taught them to hate a group. There is nothing natural about that. I also include racial supremacy in this category.
Maybe he supposes they think biracial people, of their particular combination, are superior.
I suspect that one of the things toddlers don’t know is what counts as “different.”
Current society codes skin color as “different” but hair color as “insignificant difference”, for instance. This puzzled me as a child; I remember asking my father (I was somewhat older than a toddler, but I’m pretty sure still in single digit age) whether skin color and hair color were somehow inherited in a different fashion from each other. He said, more or less, “No, of course not”; and there was something about his tone of voice that kept me from pursuing it any further.
I think we also have a strong tendency to be much more concerned about people who we think of as closer to us. This is probably partly defensive, in our current situation of numbers and information transmission – if you’re going to be equally upset every time anybody dies as when your parent or close friend or child does, you’re not going to be able to function. But it’s probably also partly based on your genes trying to protect themselves even if by the exclusion of others.
I think that’s partly true.
What differences are considered significant, and who one’s supposed to be afraid of, are certainly taught. (Hatred is based on fear, so I’m going to consider primarily fear.)
But throughout human history and evolution it was very often true that other members of our species posed a danger; and if one doesn’t know the person, one doesn’t know whether they’re dangerous, and may even have trouble understanding their social signals. So a fear of somebody not part of one’s group, or appearing not to behave as one expects from members of one’s group, most likely does have a survival basis built into it.
However – so does an attraction to and a desire to learn from othered people; both because we’re an outcrossing species and need genetic variety, and because for us additional knowledge has often been highly useful for survival.
The balance of these two impulses seems to vary from individual to individual. And, as with all impulses in humans, society can encourage or discourage one or the other.
At this point it seems to me, even aside from moral issues, that our survival is likely to depend on society’s encouraging learning from, and learning to get along with, people who we see as Different; and also to depend on our realizing that, even if we can and in fact need to be able to happily eat dinner while children far from us (in one sense or another of “far”) are dying of hunger, nevertheless we need to work, and vote, to try to benefit everyone in a global sense.
Congressman Ruben Gallego, who is being touted to run against Kyrsten Sinema in the 2024 Democratic primary, is railing her for not taking part in the Democratic rallies or attempts to campaign for Democratic candidates.
I saw it as, “My race seems superior to me but only because I’m white, other races think the same thing and it’s all a matter of perspective.” You know, progressive and enlightened racism.
There’s a news report of a Tesla running amok in China and killing two people. Elon responded to the report by posting the news report with laughing emojis. He finally deleted it after he got heaps of criticisms.
The tweet is deleted, so I can’t link to it, but here’s the news report:
It’s not in mine, but in America only white supremacists have the ability to make the lives of people of other races miserable as a result of their beliefs. One can easily find black folks who believe that being black is superior, but they don’t tend to have the power or scope to institutionalize and enforce their beliefs in a meaningful way.
