It's a good question. In America, we know that we still have plenty of racial problems. Racial profiling and economic disadvantages connected to race are two of them, but there are many more. I wonder if our problems come from the fact that the american path to independence included the unfair, violent, and terrible treatment of blacks, asians, and of course the native americans. The ghosts of many massacres and institutionalized acts of violence (which are really worse, because they recur and become normalized for decades and centuries) still haunt the interactions which we have with our neighbors and even our internet posts (as a white guy, i am definitely cognizant of the fact that I am speaking to someone that has identified himself as black.)

Another possibility is that people will always privilege their own race over others. So the race in power will prosper more than the others. If that is true, than Obama being president will go some way toward reparation of damages to the black race. But there needs to be more.

Read some books by sociologists. There are good Black sociologists as well such as W.E. B. DuBois, William Julius Wilson etc. A good primer is Racist Culture by South African sociologist David Goldberg. Here are a few theories:

1) White supremacy and privilege. Whites want to maintain their privileged access and Blacks and other minorities are a threat. This is manifested in anti-Affirmative action sentiment and other things. Notice how up in arms they get arguing about meritocracy when for hundreds of years there was NO MERITOCRACY only white males getting unearned preferences for jobs, promotions, and political office. Now white people are the ones crying about reverse racism.

2) Labor force exploitation. If you convince a group of people that they are inferior and only suitable for menial work you have a cheap source of labor. Deny them resources and make sure they stay 'dumb.' Read Claude Steele's work on Stereotype Threat and academic achievement for minorities. Jane Elliot also did a famous classroom experiment where she convinces half of her class with blue eyes that they are inferior and their academic performance goes down. It's all self-fulfilling prophecy.

3) Psychological reasons of intergroup threat. Inherent in-group bias. Think back to hunter-gatherer societies in which another clan can be seen as a threat.

Racism is one of the most brilliant social systems that ever existed. It's also one of the most flat-out,diabolical, just plain evil,twisted-as-hell,hateful systems ever devised! Curious to read some analytical thoughts from people here.

Perhaps your question is better suited for a panel of anthropologists, sociologists, and other social scientists that study this issue, and not a forum of metalheads. Nothing good will come of this thread.

It appears despite the thread topic, you are not actually asking a question. But if you were, the answer would be yes, and the thread could be closed.

The germseed of racism is people looking different. If you have that then people attach ideas to the different appearances. Get rid of that and you get rid of racism, but then you'll have discrimination on the basis of other physical attributes, like redheads or physical deformities. Get rid of those and make everyone uniformly identical in appearance and you will be left with discrimination on the basis of differing accents and differing languages. Enforce a unitary language and accent and then you have the Borg.

So we all need to become the Borg and everything will be fine.

Well, this may be oversimplifying things but it can also be construed as that humans were built to love as much as to hate. Usually hate is a fear of someone taking something from you. It was probably built in from hunter-gatherer times of seeing another clan taking the food and shelter resources that you wanted to keep for your own clan's survival.

Racism probably started as "Clan Z eat to much food. They eat more than we do. If they eat all of the food there will be none left on the trees."

Then as time goes on, "Clan Z are shit..They ate all the food. They are ugly fatties who eat everything."

A few centuries later. "Clan Z are an ugly inferior and destructive race of people. They are so dumb that they not only ate their own food supply up, but they came over to beg for our food supply. If it wasn't for us trying to keep them out of our territory, then they would have destroyed us as they destroyed themselves. We are a smarter group of people. We should never allow the inferiors, Clan Z to associate and marry within our tribe."

100 Centuries later. "Nation Z are just stupid, ignorant, ugly, dumb ass, fat, uneducated people. I wish they would just die. Perhaps we should just kill them all. It would make our life better."

Nice baiting tactic. It would've worked better had you not expounded your position revealing your bias from the start. I mention this because you've set this discussion up in such a way that it will demonize any dissenting opinions.

Isn't it just difference in general? Kids and racists latch on to the idea of someone being different in any way, and use that against them. It doesn't have to be physical. I'm still unable to identify a Jew out of a crowd of people, and if you didn't have the racial division available as an idea people would grow up never knowing the difference.

I think racism in the modern "first-world" is more comparable to a religion than anything. Even in the most backwoods, rural communities (at least in the U.S.); it's not something that can be openly broadcast without outrage from the general population. There's definitely a pervading sense of intolerance toward racist beliefs across my country that makes it nearly impossible for anyone here to be genuinely ignorant of the evidence contradicting those ideologies. Just about every "white supremacist" I've found on the internet, upon investigation, turned out to be someone with abnormally low self-esteem for one reason or another... these people willfully delude themselves into believing the shit they espouse to compensate for a general lack of achievement in life. It's convenient to shrug off the countless problems in the world, at the end of the day, and say "Well... at least I passed my white genes on to my kids!".

No offense, but I stopped reading at "privilege". I'm pretty sure the heading was a rhetorical question at this point anyway.
Thanks, but no thanks, professor.

P.D: Anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Legal


Power struggle, I would say.

Modern racism is the ideological offspring of colonialism. A society whose economy is based on the exploitation of people with darker skin automatically starts believing in the superiority of its own race.

Christian medieval Europe didn't really care about race because everything was about your devotion to God and your allegiance to feudal lords. In fact, Christianity started as a unifier of different cultures and ethnicities. The ancient world did have sort of a proto-form of racism, particularly ancient Greece saw itself as the only civilized culture, whereas everyone else was seen as barbaric. Homer's Odyssey can be read as an example of this thinking.

But I don't think there's any other period in history that brought an ideology of ethnic and cultural superiority anywhere near the extremes of the modern age. Such an ideology can only thrive that much in a culture that can be sure of its dominion over all others.

Idk racism seems like a natural thing, discriminating your tribe from other tribes by the most obvious features: where you're from and what you look like. I think it's natural for someone to trust their own type the most and to hold all others at somewhat of a distance. Maybe that sounds barbaric but I think it's true. I'm not going to start blowing busses up or anything but if someone's a racist it doesn't mean they are worse than the person who secretly hates union workers or driving in the snow.

That said I have a number of black and Latin friends and don't consider myself very racist at all.

In a tribal society, most of the "other tribes" your tribe came in contact were ethnically indistinguishable from yours. Racism would have been a silly concept to tribal people because when your survival depends carefully considering who to cooperate with and who to treat with hostility, factoring in something as inconsequential as ethnic traits would have seemed like madness.

There are very few human behaviours (beyond basic biological necessities) that are truly ahistoric. One thing we seem to be unable to shake off is our tendency to universalize concepts specific to our current society into constants of human nature. I think it's a reflex of established norms to justify themselves.

DAMN man I can dig it.

It's recognizing a perceived problem and placing blame: "Hmm, it's not MY fault. It must be THEIR fault." And then rationalize that however you want to; belief, skin color, geography, customs, etc. Combined with animal territorial instincts and self preservation, it seems to be a pretty natural occurrence anywhere in history.

If we woke up tomorrow and there were only Chinese people on this Earth, they would separate into groups and hate each other.

There would not have been colonialism if racism wasn't there in the first place. The nation itself has racism in its foundation, with its arbitrary division of humans based on irrelevant properties.

Sorry, but you're wrong. No crime actually needs an underlying ideology (except, obviously, when its definition includes such a motive). There is absolutely no racism needed to go to an undeveloped country and exploit the natives for personal gain. That's like saying you need to hate rich people to rob them.

The early colonialists were pioneers of capitalism. Expeditions to the new world were expensive as hell, the conquistadores had investors back in Europe and needed to turn a profit or lose everything. The crimes of the colonial age were first and foremost motivated by greed. Racism developed subsequently as a way to justify them, in particular against the dominant Christian ideology of all humans being equal in their role as the crown of God's creation and their potential to become good Christians and go to heaven.

This is true to some extent. I say some extent because there were no written records from prehistoric times, so we have no idea how tribes interacted with another aside from plausible speculation, such as tribal conflicts over access to fertile land and hunting grounds. For all we know, they could've, as you stated in another post, engaged in some kind of proto-racism as the ancient Greeks did, even over arbitrary issues like differences in phenotype. But we'll never really know due to a lack of primary sources.


Agreed. The notion of a one-size-fits-all civilization only developed as a universal construct during the 20th century when globalization came into existence. The reason why the West attempts to spread "civilization" across the globe is perhaps because the societies of "non-civilized" peoples are fundamentally incompatible with ours (read: free-market enterprise), thus they must be replaced entirely.

The world is inherently racist! Dismantle it!

Racism was devised? Great troll thread.

Uh, yes? I wouldn't put it as clumsily as you (purposely?) do, but I'm willing to bet pretty much every human individual growing up in any society has grains of racism in the core of their being. Due to how demonized racism (justifiably) is, people are afraid to admit their very human flaws, preventing any potential, personal progress in that regard. Plus, racism isn't just something visceral and obviously fucking horrible like the lynchings in America and other violent hate crimes, but also structural discrimination and implicit prejudice, i.e. cops experiencing black people as more immediate threats than other people, or simply non-black civilians crossing the street to avoid the black person walking towards them.. which owes itself to western colonial history. I mean for fucks sake, slavery was ended in America, what, 140 years ago? Lynchings lasted for more half the 20th century, with most of the perpetrators walking away scott-free or receiving small sentences. Do you not think these effects are still felt in modern society?

Also, I don't want to minimod or anything, but instead of being passive-aggressive and patronizing to comments you disagree with, why not actually partake in the discussion?

And so what? That means we should leap into a crusade to correct them?


Progress is a loosely used term that borders on the abstract. How is being overly tolerant of people different from myself in significant, even fundamental, ways progress? Don't interpret this to mean I'm in favour of bigotry and harming others as a result, but if I can't identify with someone who does not speak my language, is not willing to adopt my cultural norms, or conform to the society he/she lives in, is that such a terrible thing? There's a reason why different ethnic groups tend to be more comfortable interacting with their own. Also, don't interpret this to mean I'm altogether opposed to immigration, even though I do believe there should be major reforms in that area of government to stem the influx of troublesome migrants (refugees with a propensity for criminal and violent behaviour) from the developing world into more developed nations.


America's situation is a complex one. Yes, there has been much damage to its people of African descent, but this whole culture of critique that has built itself around the notion that all whites are the recipients of undeserved privilege and maintain it through a system perpetuating white supremacy is just shifting the blame to another group, which will only serve to alienate them and strengthen racial animosity in the country. We have seen a massive tide of this sweeping over the nation in the wake of the incident in Ferguson; something that is still fresh in the minds of many. Race-baiters like Al Sharpton and Tim Wise are provocateurs who make a living off this sort of thing because controversy of this nature is extremely profitable, not just for them but also the media who have playing it for all its worth, creating even more incendiary division between leftists and rightists. There is a better approach to dealing with America's volatile racial climate, but it must transcend the usual back-and-forth blame-game. However, I have a sickening feeling things won't change anytime soon, lest there be more chaos in the midst of any foreseeable change.


You know what else is cool? Reading selectively. Go and enlighten all the other posters on here making snide remarks within reason and in a similar context, why don't you.

You guys are all arguing about what causes two different things that both happen to be called racism. Inhumanist discusses systemic bigotry against a "race" on a societal level; Dembo and DisembowelMe (and me, earlier in the thread) discuss interpersonal bigotry against a "race" on an individual or small group level. They are not the same thing, and do not have the same causes.

I guess Dembo is arguing that systemic bigotry is not possible without prior interpersonal bigotry.

Given the right circumstances, they all intersect. I don't see a problem with discussing the two separately so long as some cross-recognition is made along the way.

Read historical descriptions of people who are discovered during expeditions and such, and you'll see how racist those descriptions are. I have not much hope being involed in a discussion with someone who believes racism was developed that late in history, when nations were formed long before that and properties such as origin of birth, language, skin colour and other physical properties were factors by which people treated each other very differently. Tons of pre-colonial conflicts involves a description of "the others" as "savages" and such, with different physical properties being pointed out as characteristics of people to defeat or at least stay away from. Even tons of small tribes have a very long history of intense racism towards other tribes.

Haven't read the entire thread too carefully, but I would also disagree with anyone claiming racism is inherent in humans.

Careful of color-blind rhetoric. Aspects of difference are not irrelevant or arbitrary.

Haha. That sound like you've been persevering for a while.

According to World Values Survey, the world's most racially tolerant countries are:
United States, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Britain, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Australia, New Zealand

The world's least racially tolerant countries are:
India, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea

Make of that what you will.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... e-you.html

I'm surprised India was included in the list of the world's least tolerant countries, but Brazil was lumped into the other list. Maybe they should look at the caste system they have in place there and all the non-white Brazilians that constitute almost the entire population of the favelas. I'm also sure Iran was mentioned purely for political reasons, with no real evidence to justify their inclusion.

I was going to make a sarcastic remark about the Daily Mail, but then I realized they were citing a Washington Post article, which in turn had already been updated with a link to the following article about what's wrong with the survey:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wor ... professor/

"(2) In some places, when one is asked this question, they may think of a single race, perhaps the Vietnamese think of the Chinese but not of other races. So it may not be that the people are very racist in general — they just hate one group that is defined by race."

So if you are racist towards just one race, you're not really racist? I guess racism just got removed in one fell swoop.
(I'm not going into the definition of racism here.)

You kinda completely missed the point there mate. If the survey ignores that racism comes in different forms and degrees and only goes by one binary criterion it is highly questionable what it actually describes. Is a bucket filled with ping-pong balls heavier than one filled with billiard balls because there are more balls in it?

Yeah, I'm definitely not one of those "omg racism in South Korea is so fucking awful!" types, but South Korea definitely does not belong on that list.

I've only witnessed few cases regarding this, but would you say that white people in South Korea are in some ways treated like some sort of exalted zoo animal? Many Koreans are definitely racist, but their stance on their racial supremacy is somewhat ambiguous.

Very homogenous nations (Japan, China, Korea) tend to have odd reactions to foreigners, but I think these reactions are mainly harmless. They are, to put it bluntly, more or less totally ignorant of foreign cultures and therefore lack the tact that the multicultural west naturally assumes when initiating or discussing foreigners and foreign cultures.

There's no real precedent that dictates a need for "cultural awareness and sensitivity", or that noting differences between or even making fun of foreigners is bad because they don't have quite the same history that Europe and the US do in terms of Imperialism, Colonialism or slavery, only of colonizing other Asian countries and enslaving one another. I honestly believe Asians have more animosity and mistrust for other Asians than they do non-Asian foreigners. By and large, they're basically clueless about everyone else.

Holding East Asians to the same standards of multicultural nations doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not really anyone's job to "enlighten" them. Also, when it comes to things like "No Foreigners" signs, I'm pretty sure they just mean "We don't speak English, we can't help you". I find it hard to imagine businesses turning down money from foreigners for any other reason.

It's because drunk American soldiers get rowdy and get in fights with people.

Also Koreans don't take kindly to dark-skinned folks, generally.

Do they call them "disgusting, smelly <insert racial epithet of choice here>!", or do they say "Oh, look at their skin! look at those odd features! They look so weird!"?

The later is exactly the kind of tactlessness I was referring to in my previous post. They simply do not have a comparable cultural basis to the West that deems the later unacceptable.

I'm obviously not suggesting there are no xenophobes and racists in Asia, just that I don't think the vast majority of people are blatantly racist, merely uneducated in how to walk on eggshells all the time since they never really needed to. Seoul is not NYC, no matter how many immigrants and international students might be living there.

The kind you encounter more often is just sort of that latter, "innocent" kind you describe, but sometimes it can be a lot more serious. For example I have a Korean friend who likes to date western guys. Her family has no problem with her dating white people but actively tried to break up her relationship with a black guy. They're also big on the sort of casual racism against blacks that you get from American media.

Not to mention that there are a decent number of south Asians who live in Korea doing low-paid jobs like factory work, so there's of course some racism against those darker-skinned folks as well.

I think it comes from a huge number of sources. There's the media exposure not exactly putting minorities in the best light in foreign media, there's the fact that Korea is pretty ethnically homogeneous, there's the victim complex nationalism from centuries of Japanese antagonism/cultural imperialism/actual imperialism, there's the fact that Korea is only a relatively recently industrialized/post-industrialized country, so they've kind of got that old Victorian era thing where being super pale is attractive because it shows that you're wealthy enough to not work outside doing manual labor or farming or fishing or whatever so dark skin even among Koreans is looked down on, etc etc.

It's easy for me to say it's not a big deal since I'm white and yeah, there is sort of that "exalted zoo animal" thing going on for me, which can sometimes be irritating but really isn't that bad, but it's got to be a lot rougher for darker-skinned people who come here.

In my completely and totally uninformed opinion, I think it has a lot to do with a long human history of dealing in a "us vs. them" mentality. Race was just a means to divide people, unify a side, and band together to dominate another group of people for their goods/hunting grounds/land/etc.

I'm not sure I want to open this can of worms, but you raise a good point in that the attitudes people from the Asian countries have of black people seem to be formed almost entirely through western media. I wonder, though (and this is where the worms come in), how much of that second hand media is really "racially biased", and how much of it is stereotypical/racist pandering designed to appeal to minority groups themselves, or even black-oriented media created by black "moguls" and taken out of context by a culture totally removed from its meaning?

It's very common in the west to see advertising aimed at "minority groups" and ethic cultures, and they don't really fit in with the white, European narrative that Asian countries have been accustomed to since the days of British Imperialism. Referencing (sometimes violent) inner-city/ghetto culture undoubtedly creates a negative impression of black culture when it's taken out of context and robbed of meaning. Instead of being seen as an expression of a lot of black peoples' lives and where they come from, it just gets turned into a spectacle and gives culturally isolated people a sense that "black people are just like this".

I certainly don't think it's done willfully, though. America exports all of its media (most of which is garbage) globally with the goal of making money. How people from other more isolated countries interpret it is really up to them, which brings me to my earlier point about it being no one's job to educate them. It's up to the individuals who want to learn, or the concerned parties (such as your friend) to try to get others to understand the outside world beyond media exports [Side note: The same could be said of certain western Japanophiles with insanely narrow, simplistic, anime/manga/jpop-centric consumer-tourist views of Japanese culture].