| Hawkeye said:
The blind people would be unaware of the races and there would be no racial tension. The majority of 3rd party viewers would report varying levels of racial tension. I myself in all likelyhood would report that there was a small amount of racial tension. I belive people are inhently racist, and that we cannot fight it but never truly eliminate it. Sort of how humans inherintly have savage characterisitcs that can be greatly supressed but not destroyed. |
I tend to agree with you on most of that, but I don't know that it is inherent in humanity. I would agree that noticing differences is inherent from a young age, it is after all essential to distinguishing between individuals. The question I would ask is whether or not that 'difference' information is used to make negative inferences about others and whether it is race information specifically that is used or just all information and we are simply only sensitive to the race component due to our past.
My theory on this would be that, if we are predisposed to racism, then it is because of the mechanisms for inter-species competition that were required in ages past. The instinct within each person uses these differences as justification for competive behavior, only its not just in the typical squabbling sense you would see in intra-species competition, but in those exploitative ways seen between inter-species competition (particularly those of "man vs beast"). To be clear I'm not suggesting that this is a case of different species (I would disagree with that suggestion strongly based on scientific evidence, not to mention moral outrage), just that the biological mechanisms that drove inter-species competition is now responsible(a root cause) for driving what is actually an intra-species division.
If that is the case I certainly don't see it as any sort of justification for the behavior either. If the majority of people can control that instinct a majority of the time then it boils down to self-discipline, which is the foundation of civilized society and in essence the unspoken contractual requirement of all members who join (ie self-control).
In todays world it seems that stealth racism is the name of the game. Both in terms of exploiting people's sensitivity to racism (which is racism in its own right), and in terms of the duplicit nature in which truly racist commentors often go about their business.
The real challenge of stealth racism is that it can be exploited from both sides. While the emotional aspect of it drives some to be so oversensitive to it (in most cases legitimately so) that even folks who are truly not making a comment born out of racism can be accused of it, while at the same time others intentionally use it as a weapon in many cases skirting the edge of acceptable quite adeptly. In short, stealth racists can be cause for frivolous accusation while still being a very real problem. In this sense racism is very much a form of terrorism.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
