Thursday, June 21, 2007

Naturally racist?

Here's the point of the last post. Racism is implicit in the human code.

It's possible that's not true, but written statements seem to have a stronger effect than written possibilities. In the name of survival, humans and pre-judge things based on previous experience or learning.
I'd say it's safe to assume it's a very natural human function to react to your internal majority of conflicting opinions. We see or learn of achievements or failures that are tagged with a race... and that information is forever imprinted in our brains and affecting our objectivity on a sub-conscience/reactionary level (and further if we aren't cognizant of our own bias).

I don't think I even need to back this up. It just makes sense, unless you think we are so different from so many other animals that learn and judge for survival. I wonder how many generations people would have to live in the wild before they became feral?
*in case you didn't pick up on it, that picture is Will Ferrell gone feral about 10 minutes after the teleprompter malfunctioned on the local morning show "Wake up and Smile." In his right hand, he holds the head of the weatherman. He will eat the brain stem shortly, proclaiming, "the weatherman is dead... his strength be in me!"

Of course, this does not make racism ok. Racisms is still bad mmmkay. For me, this provides a different insight: on how to combat racism, and why it is so hard to. Clearly mass media can be a monumental help or hindrance, but I think the media should report exactly what's going on... so for me that's kind of moot.

2 Comments:

Blogger charlie said...

Charlie B. Chuckles' Theory of Everything (working title) holds that racism is not inherent in human nature, but that a desire to divide the world's population along outsiders and in-group is. Race is merely a convenient, and usually visible, line to draw between these groups. Check the top quote on http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~lkozar/EmoPhillips.html

10:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm taking a class right now that is basically this entire post...as a class. Interesting.

1:39 PM  

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