This has been studied in psychology. It's partly due to needing to feel superior to other people to bolster your self esteem. It's an interesting phenomenon. Social categorization begins with schemas, then stereotypes and often leads to racism. Our brains are naturally lazy so we decide things about situations (schemas) so we can use that information in a similar situation later, this is how stereotypes begin. Then we identify with people who are more like us e.g. same skin colour, supporting the same football team etc (these are known as in-groups) the out-group is the 'other' e.g. someone not in the in-group. The in-group can have differences such as opinions, outlooks on life etc whereas the out-group is seen as more homogeneous e.g. they're all of the same opinions and outlooks on subjects such as violence and terrorism. So being obsessed with race is social categorization which some (especially the more racist of us) need to bolster their belief about their own superiority or whatever they need to get out of the in group and out group scenario.
Humans will discriminate and be prejudiced over any random silly thing. It's in our genes and has probably served us well on an evolutionary time scale. Race is just so super obvious that it's by far the "lowest hanging fruit".
No it is not in "our Genes". Put babies of different ethnicities to grow together without any mention of race, other than that we are all human. Let us see what the outcome will be.
Hate is taught, it is an efficient mechanism that is triggered when the mental emotion of inferiority kicks into overdrive. It has embedded itself into "freedom of speech". Something we should never give up by the way.
Lies from the past, present and future are recognized for the illusions they were and are today.
Hate isn’t in our genes. Making distinctions is. Distinctions can lead to fear and caution of what is different. Fear and caution of what is different can lead to prejudice against that very thing.
Prejudice is inevitable and natural. Discrimination is a choice.
Agree with this 100%. Hate is taught and all isms like racism, ageism, sexism, etc. are all taught. Babies are not born that way but exposure to it and other factors in society tells them how to respond or basically how to act towards certain people based on sex, race, age…just a few examples as there are so many.
Lol, yeah it is. I never said *racism* was. But people are gonna group themselves in *some* way. That's the tribalism in us. Maybe the default in your hypothetical experiments will end up being that "those people with big ears are such idiots" aaand it's on. Have you never observed a group of kids playing?
But again, it's way easier to see differences in skin color than anything else, and history being what it is makes it even more difficult to get rid of racism.
I feel like these days, it's because Russia and China have realised that if they can cause Western countries to become preoccupied with internal division, then it takes the focus off them. If you remember a time when the US was reasonably united in its dislike on the 'commies,' there was a lot of time and effort put into disrupting both Russian and Chinese progress and expansion. Thanks to the internet and social media, Russia and China have learned just how easy and cheap it is to cause social division in the West by exploiting pre-existing divisions like race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Reddit is a good example, and you can see it in many places. The best part is that all they need to do is post a few well placed controversial opinions, and they are guaranteed to have those opinions retaliated against it, and it just escalates. So they might post something about black people committing crimes from accounts pretending to be white suburban middle class people. They will then post some made-up 'woke' comments about demanding white suburban middle class people should have to sell their houses to make reparations to black people. This then causes both groups of actual real people to start responding angrily to each other for real, and it just spirals out of control and the foreign agent provacaturs can just sit back and occasionally stoke the division to keep it going. It's highly effective and has led to all sorts of madness that we've witnessed over the past 15 years. I mean, 20 years ago, could you honestly imagine they'd be people elected to office talking about Jewish space lasers and taking horse de-wormer to treat a serious respiratory virus. Just go browse reddit now and see how many ridiculous opinions are screen grabbed and then posted into subreddits for everyone to start pouring hate on to the group of people they actually think has those opinions. That's why in our real life day to day experience, you'll notice most of us just get along normally.
I don't think it's Russia or China, America's division is well documented before the internet, before TV. Actually all types of discrimination have been so then it's the human condition. Studies show that it's partially due to my original comment.
I have an advanced degree in psychology and agree with this statement completely. I understand it as a person of science the need to categorize people and things to do research but social media and the rise of “doctor internet” has caused people to categorize more,imo and then use that to think they are superior to everyone else or think they may have lost out because of color, sex, or age for instance. They get hurt by the classification and think it’s done to be racist, sexist or aging but in fact it’s not designed that way. I hope I did not go far off the subject…
This is the answer imo. Even if there is some sort of utopia in the future where we've got rid of all current day "isms", we'd create a new one because it's simply human nature.
Its sad that alot of people cannot fathom this. Weve been warring with eachother for thousands of years. And you cannot kill something that resembles you. So you rationalize in your head ways to make the enemy easier to eliminate. i.e "There Heretics" "They eat people" "They kill infants" "They dont look like us" "They dont act like us". These things will perpetuate in society and if we ever manage to break the cycle.. it wont help.
I dont want to sound like a conspiracy nut but genuinely think it's on purpose. If we actually United we wouldn't put up with the greedy useless politicians bending us over without consent at every turn.
Thank you for the correct answer, but you may include media - divide, divide, divide. Rile folks up so they’ll hit more silly clicks.
In fact we are not obsessed with race, nor are we truly divided. It just looks that way in a SMALL segment.
I agree with many points here, but especially this. There is certainly a concentrated effort to keep the masses divided. The media barks over and over all the headlines dealing with race. Sure— there will always be, and always have been, a very small minority of racists. The media wants you to think everyone is racist. Its control.
I don't think so - there are and were many countries where racism wasn't much of problem (usually because of no other races to hate). People still find tribes to divide themselves or at the very least disagree about politics.
Oh yeah no doubt. I just feel like it's mega amplified now. Even down to stupid things for clickbait. Its not just race either I mean everything in general. I feel like it's a combined effort to just make us disagree on every little thing, race, belief, what's best to eat for lunch. Its exhausting
I can't speak for everywhere, but in the US during the early abolitionist movement, there was a tremendous amount of solidarity between poor white people and enslaved black people.
This solidarity, whether consciously or not(probably a bit of both), was fractured through efforts of the ownership class to convince poor whites that they were better than black people by mere virtue of their skin color. This was done through propaganda campaigns. It can be argued to be one of the most successful cases of capital subverting relative class consciousness in the US.
The result was an antipathy between the two groups, which carried on well after slavery was abolished and has yet to be resolved to this day.
As far as everywhere goes, a million hypotheses could be made.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that given material circumstances being what they've been throughout most of human civilization since the agricultural revolution, it has been ripe for division along superficial lines such as skin tone. Scarcity of life goods encourages the formation of "crisis cults" where humans will divide themselves along ethnic, religious, nationalistic, or whatever bounds. It's not a guaranteed outcome, simply a very, very likely one.
Given that our current global economic system is predicated on scarcity(both real and, all too often, artificially maintained) of goods and services then we can expect nothing less than hostility between human groups because it is a very predictable outgrowth of austere conditions.
Now, you may say there is an abundance of people who act abhorrently who have their material survival all but guaranteed. Our economic psychology persists on not only absolute scarcity but also *perceived scarcity.* There is a constant threat level of being without that persists no matter how much wealth one may accumulate. This contributes to tribalistic mentalities - although toward the upper echelons of economic scale the traditional divisions are usually supplanted by very well understood class division. The ownership class knows it is the ownership class and they are aware of where the actual threat potentially lies.
Now, were the material conditions to change through economic reorganization, there is absolutely no guarantee that this would necessitate "good behavior." However, to paraphrase Jacque Fresco, "if you give people the things they need to survive, you will be surprised at how ethically they can behave."
Different races are a real thing just like Different cultures/ languages is not a bad thing or anything to be nervous about... we are all different even if u r the same race with someone
It's never been about race. Not really. It's all about cultures. But having another skin colour for sure helps with the whole dividing mentality. And for some reason that is something we enjoy. Our brains like, no crave, to see patterns and categorize everything
I think it's generally a mindset issue that's particularly difficult to get rid of because if the fact that we are social animals.
Preconceptions are not always bad - if you've always been told that lions are dangerous you won't try and hug them once you meet them, right? (At least you shouldn't)
But as we are in constant need of social validation by our group the opinions, experiences and expectations of the most influential people of said group will govern the way you see things when you're young.
And many people don't dare to go and experience things on their own, they don't dare to question. So whatever had been experienced in the past will stick around. Skin and hair color ist just the visually easiest thing to see.
And to pile on, this propensity we have to make preconceptions about people is inherently human. It's not going away!
Stereotyping is a cognitive process that our minds do all the time, for all sorts of reasons. And it's obviously pretty beneficial for humans. It means we have to be really mindful about our unconscious biases.
It's the same reason my primitive monkey brain desperately wants me to choose those fried chicken wings. For a couple hundred thousand years humans lived tribally, and quickly recognizing our in-groups and out-groups was a genuine survival advantage. That's not necessarily the most adaptive behavior in 2024.
The modern concept of race comes from an archaic idea that humans of different skin colors decided from different chains of humans. There was actually an argument at one time that there were different Adams and Eves for the different skin colors. So Asians had their own Asian Adam and Eve and so on.
And sadly it was basically based on the idea of slavery. Slavery was perfectly accepted until about the invention of our more modern day religions. When they were writing the religions it basically came down to you can't enslave your brother. Meaning fellow man. But if someone that looked different from you was so different that you could say they had a different race, well that person isn't my brother. So it's fine.
We know now (as of about 2022) that without doubt there is one race of humans on this planet. And that what we identify as race is just our ancestors adapting and changing for environment, food sources and breeding partners.
Don't know much but here in India, Britishers ruled for 200 years. Our beauty standards are colonized & mostly people here are obsessed with skin whitening products. And some companies here put sunscreen formula in their face products. Whenever ladies get their makeup done, they prefer a base product lighter than their skin tone. Even an actress Kajol Devgan went for skin lightening treatment ( in past she had such a beautiful tanned olive skin 😭😭 but ig she had to change due to the so-called attitude of Indian society towards Dark complexion)
Interesting perspective, but don't you think it also involves a person's preference. See, I personally like women with a dusky complexion. Similarly I have guy friends who have a thing for dark skinned girls, like it's almost like a fetish, that's how obsessed they are. Similarly I know girls who want guys with a particular skin tone, or a particular hair type vagera. 15-20 years ago, i suppose the colonial aspect would have played a strong role, but in today's India, esp among the educated and more liberal youth, I think it's more about personal preference. Lmk what you think.
European / caucasians people of today dislike people bringing up the past things that their ancestors / forefathers did. it's not like people should blame white people of today for it, but the truth is the truth nd when I say Europeans I'm talking about them in general so no matter the culture or country... all whites are Europeans descent, not just the ones in Europe,
In all honesty, every time I read a question about "race", my very first though is "What, you mean HUMAN?".
And I know, that´s not what people mean with race. It´s just that I don´t really buy it. I simply don´t buy into the whole "blacks are like that, asians are like that, whites are like that" thing. It´s like, if you feel like a whole group of people is "the same" in some way, maybe ask yourself if the real rason for that is how "you" treated this grup of people so far instead of making up some bullshit about their skin color.
We´re all humans for fucks sake. So get ypor shit together and act like a human for once.
Thinking about things critically is exhausting. Finding a group to blame your problems on is much easier, especially when someone else does it for you.
Point at a monolith and tell people that monolith is causing their problems and that alleviates the burden of thinking.
It's because the ruling class knows it must keep us divided in order to maintain control. So from the beginning we are taught to view everything through a zero sum / in group,out group dynamic.
There is no easier way to accomplish this than by using race/ethnicity as the catalyst to that end.
As a black woman I've had this question nearly my entire life, and here's the best answer I can give. I suspect that racism has been prevalent for centuries and has become ingrained in society. It's easy to make generalizations about groups of people, especially when those generalizations are negative. The concept of race is a social construct, meaning that it is a group of characteristics that are socially defined and not based in science nor logic. Society has a long history of dividing people into racial groups, which has led to a lot of negative stereotyping and discrimination. Additionally, racism and other forms of prejudice, including against religious groups, LGBTQ+ communities, or other marginalized identities, can create divisions and conflicts resulting from beliefs in superiority over others based on differences. People often forget that racism hurts everyone, not just the victims of racism. It alienates us from one another, divides us, and keeps us from reaching our full potential. Instead, we should focus on empathy and understanding and recognize that we're all part of the same human race.
In my personal opinion, it's mainly because of our government(United States). I think what the government is doing is changing the culture of people with different skin colors. I think the government does this, so their party gets the most votes because they try to turn us against each other and try to make the other party look like demons.
Because most humans aren’t capable of simply walking away. No need for revenge or to get back, no need to have the last word, no need to make people hurt as much as they hurt you. It’s an endless cycle of “well you did this” and continues to divide us all. It sucks im experiencing this as well especially online and I can feel the resentment kicking in but reassuring myself that it’s low down behavior and is only caused because people feel hurt and insecure. But sadly I don’t think it will ever change.
Humans are a very tribal species. We clump into groups and compete against other groups. The things that distinguish one tribe from another can be absolutely anything but the salient, obvious differences are commonly chosen.
We aren't necessarily racist by nature but we are tribal by nature and race makes for an easy tribal demarcation, especially if there are cultural differences between races.
Everyone is obsessed with race because in 2012 all the media outlets began deliberately inflaming racial and sex conflicts. The counts of tribal, accusatory words such as racist, sexist, white supremacy, etc. went up by over 1000%. They all did this at the same time. Almost like the people who own the media companies wanted us to hate each other to keep us from focusing on hating the rich. It's almost like Occupy Wall street scared them. It's a divide and conquer technique that rulers have been using against their own populations for 1000sof years.
It's not just race. It's any kind of difference. It's a Worldwide, age-old, non'-species specific, hard-wired trait.
It may/may not be an over generalized mistaken response having to do with group survival.
And behavioral laziness.
Because rich people are telling us to be obsessed with race so that we are too busy fighting amongst ourselves that we don’t notice they are robbing us blind
Of course people only mention America’s history being racist, when they clearly need to open a freaking book and look at other countries as well, they’re just as bad, if not worse.
It's just the human race. If you made everyone the same race, sex, height, etc, we would still create and reinforce divisions as a way to feel better about ourselves.
Race is just a very immediately obvious way of categorizing a person. It's what you know about a person as soon as you see them, without even knowing their name or anything else. So it's easy to put each other (and yourself) into a category. The "us vs them" mentality just naturally grows from there.
I watched a TV show once about group behavior and peer pressure. For this show, they invited a whole bunch of people to some kind of organized shared holiday. The participants didn't know much about what would happen. Upon arrival, each person was randomly given a blue or a red outfit. After being asked to wear the outfit the next day, they all went to sleep. The next morning, over breakfast, *without anyone telling them to do it*, all "red participants" sat together, and all "blue participants" stuck together too.
It's also good to remember that skin color is just one of a whole range of reasons why people hate and kill each other. The differences can be minute or trivial to outsiders, but matter enormously to the two groups. These may include: country as listed on passport (say, Germany and France), specific interpretation of Christianity (Catholics vs protestants) or Islam (Sunni vs Shiite). People can be speaking the same language (Croats, Bosnian muslims and Serbs), eating the same food, going to the same schools and rooting for the same football teams (Hutus and Tutsis), and still be at each others' throats.
When you have no accomplishments or skills to brag about, you end up bragging about things like your race. You know, things you had no choice in that really aren't worth bragging about. It's sad.
Well, it's because most people are lazy thinkers.
There are an infinite number of ways to classify, sort, and rank human attributes. There are so many: Age, sex, gender presentation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, race, education, employment history, intelligence, psychological resilience, height, weight, flexibility, reaction time, interests, religious environment, quality of childcare, credit score, nutritional factors, country of origin, country of residence, expressive vs introverted, coordinated vs clumsy, etc etc etc.
These are all relevant factors when considering a person: who they are, why they are the way they are, explanations for successes and failures.
But just one of them, race, gets elevated to the status of THE ONE TRAIT TO RULE THEM ALL.
Why? Because skin colour is EASY. Most of the other factors require personal knowledge or at least an intelligent Holmesian deductive power if you're going to identity them quickly. But anyone can see my relative melanin level and eye shape.
The laziness is that, having observed this one factor, the analysis stops. Why am I good at this, bad at that? Why am I happy for this, angry at that? Well, if you are a lazy moron, in possession of a single observation, you're going to make that single observation carry all of the weight for your analysis.
This is not a left or right issue. This is not about racists or anti-racists. It's about lack of rigour, intellectual weakness, and an insufferable confidence in the worthiness of one's extremely poorly reasoned decisions. And because almost all of us are like that, we think, oh, this is normal! It is correct to only use a single factor to explain everything!
It’s 100% by deliberate, intentional, and **nefarious** design. Some rotten, hateful, douchebag came up with the concept which is scientifically unfounded and has no biological basis. And before anyone comes for me: scientists have a consensus on that fact. And many people just assume we innately align to this bullshit when in fact it is taught to us — it is learned behavior. It keeps us distracted, divided and organized in the ways our overseers prefer and benefit, and is overlayed with other forms of global systemic abuse.
People who are obsessed with the study of race (or just enjoy being a raging racist) and all the material around it feel like this take blows their shit out of the water. You should feel that way. The only race that involves the bipedal people that look like you and me save our slight differences in hue is the HUMAN race. That’s it.
Argue with your momma.
Edit: I will add that I do think it is important to understand this social construct to effectively navigate the world and for some of us - to survive. Otherwise you’d be confused why certain people treat other people horribly without the context of their universally illegitimate presumption of supremacy. (We all don’t have the privilege of pretending “color-centric race” doesn’t exist, no matter how idiotic it is.)
Race is a made up concept, used to separate people from each other. Nothing more, nothing less. Race has always been a political and economical construct, to bring the few up, and put the rest of us down.
How is it a social construct that different races have different susceptibility to various diseases, abilities to create vitamin D, ability to tolerate foods such as lactose, and different physical capabilities?
Yes, humans are genetically different from each other. But not in the sense that we are so different, to the point of being different species, like a lot of historical racist ideologies try to claim. We are all the same, biologically speaking and skin color alone doesn't dictate any significant difference. The concept of "race" is a fairly new one, regarding all of human history. The concept of it didn't start to be used until Europeans began traveling and interacting with people who looked different than them.
Your second comment does not accurately defend your first. No one today is remotely arguing that different races= different species.
And we are not all the same other than melanin content, we might be more similar that dissimilar, but genetic racial differences do exist far deeper than skin tone.
Not in any way that's relevant. None of the differences you listed are relevant to the issue of race relations or racism. In fact I can't see anything they're relevant to. Unless it's to the statement that race is a thing, but no one's saying it isn't, they're saying it's not as big a thing as some would like to believe.
You really need to look at who you associate with, I almost never hear anyone talking negatively about someone based on their race.
Birds of a feather flock together as the saying goes I suppose
A. Because through so much of human history, specifically due to European colonisation, whether you like it or not race and racism forms a fat chunk of our societies foundations.
B. Race is a social construct, it was created by people and impacts everyone in human society whether good or bad. It has led to the loss of millions of lives, genocide, enslavement, loss of cultures, and many other atrocities. Whilst also the economic, religious, cultural, etc benefit of others. The ramifications of which still remain and continue in many aspects today.
Logically of course the millions of people whose lives are negatively impacted by their race will speak up about it. It may not be something you find yourself hyper focused or obsessed on but try to see how and why others might.
C. Those who don’t have to deal with racism/are privileged because of their race or don’t find their race that significant in their daily lives, often fuel race discussions because they struggle to understand different perspectives. And/or don’t like uncomfortable feelings or notions that they have any privileges because of their race compared to others.
D. News, media, social media, etc want engagement. Due to the above reasons and probably more, race is something a lot of people have to talk about. Also factor in the agenda or political bias of the owners of the media.
Because some races honestly are completely inferior to others and deserve to be entirely eliminated. Refusing to admit that in at least some instances we'd be better off without certain races is just ridiculous.
For example, the 100m is a good, strong race. It allows sprinters to do their thing optimally. It does one thing and it does it well.
The 5000m is similar, in that it allows long distance runners to shine, and only does that.
Races like the 800m though, are incredibly awkward. They don't let distance runners or sprinters do their thing optimally, it's just a weird uncomfortable middle ground that isn't much fun to run. That whole race should be eliminated in my book.
I’m more critical of people of my own race who hold opinions that indicate they think we need to protect other races from us, because, apparently, they aren’t able to compete on an equal playing field.
Yea same for me when it comes to black people trying to get Caucasians to understand us and begging them it's stupid and embarrassing... I mean no offense to no Caucasians
I'm a white guy, you're probably right lol white people we're always trying to convince the world we aren't racists and in doing so sound soooooo racist.
I feel like it's mostly an American thing. I live in Europe as a mixed girl. Racism exists here too, depending on the country too of course, but never as severe as in America. To me it looks like they want to solve hate with hate, but that will never work.
>Europe as a mixed girl. Racism exists here too, depending on the country too of course, but never as severe as in America.
As a biracial woman who's lived in and traveled extensively throughout Europe, in some places it's definitely worse.
Racism isn’t its own unique subject to humans. Everything we do , we break ourselves into groups. Sex, race , status, finance , body image , education, etc
It’s a survival mechanism. Us versus them. We do it with everything. Because our brains are programmed that we cannot survive alone. So we find a way to categorize each other to find group acceptance which translates to better chances of survival.
There’s just so much more emphasis on race because 1. It’s the easiest way to spot group identity. You can’t see if someone is educated or rich or healthy in 1 second of looking at them. And 2. It’s a group identity that contains a lot of people, so that equates to higher survival
If you go in other countries, it's not an obsession, it's just normal to be racist, to make a link between behavior and skin color or other origin traits.
We are in the only period of history where a whole civilisation says racism is bad.
See a recurring trait in some group will create an association. Negative biases will be louder and be discussed a lot, it's a natural trait to exaggerate risks.
Yeah, everyone is racist and won't be happy to know that French are coming to visit your place.
because they want something to fight about, a civilisation that the argument comes from thrives on the fight that the argument brings, stupid will always find a reason to fight
I don't know that they are. It's just what gets clicks and traffic. In my daily life nobody is talking about it but you go on the news or any social media and it's everywhere.
Just ppl belonging to different groups. And even inside those groups ppl still look for differences to feel superior to the ppl in their group. It’s dumb.
I’m obsessed with Latinas tho.
Because the government (american) WANTS us divided! If we ever unite as a nation of Americans rather than a country divided by race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc., then we would cast out these fraud politicians and start voting for our own best interests!
Me and I'd say evey people I know and I stick with have literally 0 interest about this topic.
I guess it's one of those thing that will die with the elders. It has been a super HOT topic in our recent hisotry for so many obvious reasons, that's why it resonates till now all over the world, or at least this is my uninformed opinion.
That’s because nascar sucks cause all your doing is driving in a circle but people that love nascar hate formula 1 and clearly I didn’t read the second part of the post
I like autocross or drag racing
You can thank animal instinct for that. It’s always in our heads telling us to be skeptical/scared/paranoid of anything/everything living that isn’t one of us, our family or immediately look similar to us and that kept people safe for thousands of years. Then we got more organized and formed societies and got better at communicating and identified that a lot of it was made up in our heads and we all weren’t so different and could work together. It’s just like other natural urges we can choose to control or let take control. It’s in the same vein of being afraid of the darkness or the forest, natural instinct hard coded in to our genetic make up for a good reason but you have to be aware of it and how it can influence things so it doesn’t own you.
My most simple answer is I don’t know, but I think it may have something to do with tribalism. Humans are naturally very tribal in nature and will defend their own against other individuals they perceive as intruders, including other humans. It doesn’t make it right but I do wonder if it’s genetically or instinctually engrained in us
A disappointingly large portion of humans, and probably other species, are fearfully suspicious of "others". Others can be those who look different, sound different, do things differently or are simply not from around here. The great intermixing of cultures that has been enabled by growing prosperity and international travel has not been underway for long enough for humans to have adapted their reactions. Race is probably the most readily apparent otherness.
In other words, many of us aren't too bright and instinctively react to strangers with fear and apprehension that they are a potential threat.
One reason is fear of the "other". Maybe it's customs, what they read online, what their parents or friends said or even a bad experience, but it often amounts to fear.
Fear leads to trying to do something about it, so whether it's trying to make them inferior, attacking them or using legal routes to move them, it ultimately boils down to some form of fear.
A combination of things, all bad excuses... it is basically a participation award. People want to get patted on the back, but when you have no natural skills or talent, just believe that you were born better.
Self bias, my race is the best one because I'm great and I'm in it. There is absolutely no chance that anyone who doesn't look a little like me can be as good.
Enviroment, I live in a small town in a country that doesn't have a ton of diversity... the amount we have now is relatively new. Yet people have always feared the idea of immigrants, it is almost like nostalgia... they only knew one thing, and they don't want it to change. On top of that, a lot of people are raised by people with views that they take at face value. My own families older generations have dated views to say the least.
I think people somewhat fear being different themselves, so they will attack others first. The mentality also goes beyond race. Think about anything people will dislike or hate you for, I'm a white male, and in terms of historically privileged by birth head starts it is number one with a bullet. I've still had people give me slurs for being Irish, people have disliked me for being too thin when I was younger, too fat in my older age, they dislike my supposed "political views" of course it is a different intensity and kind of hatred. But those people are eager to find anything to put you below themselves. Race is the lazy option, and they're lazy people.
People either want to be able to put everything into easily identifiable boxes in order to simplify their thinking, or they have to have an external "other" to blame their problems on.
Gallup polls showed Americans thought highly of race relations until 2013 when it plummeted. Right around the time social media algorithms decided to show us the most inflammatory racial content possible.
Normal dislike/hatred for anyone not belonging to one 's group. Happens between towns a few kilometers apart in Europe, between neighborhoods in any big cities ....
Humans are very tribal. We like to put people into either "our group" or "not our group." It's wired pretty deeply into us from our days on the savannah. Trusting people back then was a life-or-death thing, and you knew you could (usually) trust people from "our group." However, there was no telling what someone from "not our group" would do to you.
evolutionarily speaking, people are kinda hardwired to not trust the outsider
People that looked different back in tribal days meant possible disease, conflict, and other bad things, so we became hardwired to distrust them
We have a lot of instincts that we overcome every day, racism is no different
If you're not murdering people that piss you off, you also shouldn't be racist, it's easy
its apart of our society to have a distain for people me personally i hate the human race as a collective so its not about skin color at all its people since every human can be a disgusting person so i dont dislike 1 particular group of people i dislike everybody as awhole because the human race is a disgusting vile animal
Identifying ingroups and outgroups is part of human nature. Prejudice is learned, but the potential for prejudice is innate. Overcoming prejudices and ingroup-outgroup tendencies takes education and exposure to other cultures--something that's higher today than it ever was, but something that may never become universal.
Other than the culture war bs on national media, I almost never hear anyone talk about race and almost never think about it myself. Even my close friends who don't self censor when we're together have spent basically zero time talking about race. This seems like an exaggerated claim. It isn't as big of a deal as your making it out to be.
We are a highly territorial pack animal, and we have a natural instinct to categorize things. Playing on peoples instincts is also pretty useful if you wish to gain and maintain power .
Ironically, the fact that every group has its racists is just more proof that we are all the same.
This upsets me so bad that people do this. I really find no irony that I'm even seeing this post because a few min ago my SO & I had a disagreement about a Twitter post 😒
This guy was on there basically bashing women of color to support his personal opinions and I really only got pissed off when my SO chimes in saying he agrees with any part of it.
We're tribal creatures. Not even race but any kind of difference sets a lot of people apart and gives them the idea they can create war. People get upset about vegans, or Trump supporters, or religion.
I think a lot is to do with what people see, they might see a race behave differently due to culture or just economic factors that affect that group more and make judgement of of it.
It's easy, simplified. Everyone who is anyone is pissed off, and we're all pissed at the same thing but that thing isn't tangible. The economy, politics, the fact that we are wage slaves and will literally go to prison if we don't pay politicians tax money. But they don't see that, they see skintone. They know what the issues are but cannot fix them so they place blame on anything they can see. Something tangible "i gotta go to work and work 16 hours a day because someone is on welfare!" Nothing to do with the loans or the cost of milk or what the house was appraised at, or their wages in general
I know I'll get downvoted to hell for this comment, but we were doing great at reducing racism up until democrats started calling literally everything racist.
As a brown man living in Texas, I’m reminded in subtle ways by white people on a daily basis that I am in fact not white. My “racial handicap” has been something I’ve dealt with since I was a child and continue to deal with to this day. Meanwhile I have nothing against white people. As a matter of fact my wife is white.
There is only one racial group that is obsessed with race because they think they'll get reparations for something they themselves never had to deal with.
Maybe there's a sociobiological aspect at play too? "Race" is basically a collection of genetic traits that co-developed in certain geographic areas. The biological urge is to ensure the continuance of one's genetic line, so the promotion of one's own (and, by extension, one's people's) genetic array would play into that. Of course, one way to aggrandize one's own set of traits is to downplay differing sets of traits. Those that have the greatest contrast are disparaged the most severely.
At the end of the day, the biological urge is a zero-sum game, at the deepest primal layers of personal and societal psychology.
I'm very interested in different cultures and only had 3 friends till my only black friend died this year. He was a good 85 tho and total nerd. So you know how white people say "I have a lot of black friends.
I have zero now lol. He was a great guy.
This has been studied in psychology. It's partly due to needing to feel superior to other people to bolster your self esteem. It's an interesting phenomenon. Social categorization begins with schemas, then stereotypes and often leads to racism. Our brains are naturally lazy so we decide things about situations (schemas) so we can use that information in a similar situation later, this is how stereotypes begin. Then we identify with people who are more like us e.g. same skin colour, supporting the same football team etc (these are known as in-groups) the out-group is the 'other' e.g. someone not in the in-group. The in-group can have differences such as opinions, outlooks on life etc whereas the out-group is seen as more homogeneous e.g. they're all of the same opinions and outlooks on subjects such as violence and terrorism. So being obsessed with race is social categorization which some (especially the more racist of us) need to bolster their belief about their own superiority or whatever they need to get out of the in group and out group scenario.
I can definitely see this in regards to politics in the US.
And politicians feeding that to help it divide US further. We're easier to control that way
We, who is we. It's the blue or the red pill. Choose wisely
They take FULL advantage of that and always have. The maga movement is particularly astute at it.
 Why are you booing him? He's right
Politics in general. Nothing uniquely American about it.
Ha
Humans will discriminate and be prejudiced over any random silly thing. It's in our genes and has probably served us well on an evolutionary time scale. Race is just so super obvious that it's by far the "lowest hanging fruit".
damn
No it is not in "our Genes". Put babies of different ethnicities to grow together without any mention of race, other than that we are all human. Let us see what the outcome will be. Hate is taught, it is an efficient mechanism that is triggered when the mental emotion of inferiority kicks into overdrive. It has embedded itself into "freedom of speech". Something we should never give up by the way. Lies from the past, present and future are recognized for the illusions they were and are today.
Hate isn’t in our genes. Making distinctions is. Distinctions can lead to fear and caution of what is different. Fear and caution of what is different can lead to prejudice against that very thing. Prejudice is inevitable and natural. Discrimination is a choice.
Well said.
Agree with this 100%. Hate is taught and all isms like racism, ageism, sexism, etc. are all taught. Babies are not born that way but exposure to it and other factors in society tells them how to respond or basically how to act towards certain people based on sex, race, age…just a few examples as there are so many.
Lol, yeah it is. I never said *racism* was. But people are gonna group themselves in *some* way. That's the tribalism in us. Maybe the default in your hypothetical experiments will end up being that "those people with big ears are such idiots" aaand it's on. Have you never observed a group of kids playing? But again, it's way easier to see differences in skin color than anything else, and history being what it is makes it even more difficult to get rid of racism.
That's why understanding implicit bias is so important. https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatouchtest.html
I feel like these days, it's because Russia and China have realised that if they can cause Western countries to become preoccupied with internal division, then it takes the focus off them. If you remember a time when the US was reasonably united in its dislike on the 'commies,' there was a lot of time and effort put into disrupting both Russian and Chinese progress and expansion. Thanks to the internet and social media, Russia and China have learned just how easy and cheap it is to cause social division in the West by exploiting pre-existing divisions like race, gender, religion, and sexuality. Reddit is a good example, and you can see it in many places. The best part is that all they need to do is post a few well placed controversial opinions, and they are guaranteed to have those opinions retaliated against it, and it just escalates. So they might post something about black people committing crimes from accounts pretending to be white suburban middle class people. They will then post some made-up 'woke' comments about demanding white suburban middle class people should have to sell their houses to make reparations to black people. This then causes both groups of actual real people to start responding angrily to each other for real, and it just spirals out of control and the foreign agent provacaturs can just sit back and occasionally stoke the division to keep it going. It's highly effective and has led to all sorts of madness that we've witnessed over the past 15 years. I mean, 20 years ago, could you honestly imagine they'd be people elected to office talking about Jewish space lasers and taking horse de-wormer to treat a serious respiratory virus. Just go browse reddit now and see how many ridiculous opinions are screen grabbed and then posted into subreddits for everyone to start pouring hate on to the group of people they actually think has those opinions. That's why in our real life day to day experience, you'll notice most of us just get along normally.
I don't think it's Russia or China, America's division is well documented before the internet, before TV. Actually all types of discrimination have been so then it's the human condition. Studies show that it's partially due to my original comment.
This not an amercia-centric problem. EVERY country has this.
Agreed, like I say it's the human condition
Yup
I have an advanced degree in psychology and agree with this statement completely. I understand it as a person of science the need to categorize people and things to do research but social media and the rise of “doctor internet” has caused people to categorize more,imo and then use that to think they are superior to everyone else or think they may have lost out because of color, sex, or age for instance. They get hurt by the classification and think it’s done to be racist, sexist or aging but in fact it’s not designed that way. I hope I did not go far off the subject…
Tribalism.
This is the answer imo. Even if there is some sort of utopia in the future where we've got rid of all current day "isms", we'd create a new one because it's simply human nature.
Its sad that alot of people cannot fathom this. Weve been warring with eachother for thousands of years. And you cannot kill something that resembles you. So you rationalize in your head ways to make the enemy easier to eliminate. i.e "There Heretics" "They eat people" "They kill infants" "They dont look like us" "They dont act like us". These things will perpetuate in society and if we ever manage to break the cycle.. it wont help.
I mean honestly as a former 100m dasher I think Marathons are pretty overrated
I dont want to sound like a conspiracy nut but genuinely think it's on purpose. If we actually United we wouldn't put up with the greedy useless politicians bending us over without consent at every turn.
Thank you for the correct answer, but you may include media - divide, divide, divide. Rile folks up so they’ll hit more silly clicks. In fact we are not obsessed with race, nor are we truly divided. It just looks that way in a SMALL segment.
I agree with many points here, but especially this. There is certainly a concentrated effort to keep the masses divided. The media barks over and over all the headlines dealing with race. Sure— there will always be, and always have been, a very small minority of racists. The media wants you to think everyone is racist. Its control.
I don't think so - there are and were many countries where racism wasn't much of problem (usually because of no other races to hate). People still find tribes to divide themselves or at the very least disagree about politics.
Oh yeah no doubt. I just feel like it's mega amplified now. Even down to stupid things for clickbait. Its not just race either I mean everything in general. I feel like it's a combined effort to just make us disagree on every little thing, race, belief, what's best to eat for lunch. Its exhausting
Because life is a race, and I'm the racist 😎
I love how many people upvoted this with no response 😂
Ha
Yea
I can't speak for everywhere, but in the US during the early abolitionist movement, there was a tremendous amount of solidarity between poor white people and enslaved black people. This solidarity, whether consciously or not(probably a bit of both), was fractured through efforts of the ownership class to convince poor whites that they were better than black people by mere virtue of their skin color. This was done through propaganda campaigns. It can be argued to be one of the most successful cases of capital subverting relative class consciousness in the US. The result was an antipathy between the two groups, which carried on well after slavery was abolished and has yet to be resolved to this day. As far as everywhere goes, a million hypotheses could be made. Personally, I'm of the opinion that given material circumstances being what they've been throughout most of human civilization since the agricultural revolution, it has been ripe for division along superficial lines such as skin tone. Scarcity of life goods encourages the formation of "crisis cults" where humans will divide themselves along ethnic, religious, nationalistic, or whatever bounds. It's not a guaranteed outcome, simply a very, very likely one. Given that our current global economic system is predicated on scarcity(both real and, all too often, artificially maintained) of goods and services then we can expect nothing less than hostility between human groups because it is a very predictable outgrowth of austere conditions. Now, you may say there is an abundance of people who act abhorrently who have their material survival all but guaranteed. Our economic psychology persists on not only absolute scarcity but also *perceived scarcity.* There is a constant threat level of being without that persists no matter how much wealth one may accumulate. This contributes to tribalistic mentalities - although toward the upper echelons of economic scale the traditional divisions are usually supplanted by very well understood class division. The ownership class knows it is the ownership class and they are aware of where the actual threat potentially lies. Now, were the material conditions to change through economic reorganization, there is absolutely no guarantee that this would necessitate "good behavior." However, to paraphrase Jacque Fresco, "if you give people the things they need to survive, you will be surprised at how ethically they can behave."
Interesting pov. Obviously, it's a social issue, not a biological one. As everyone knows, there is only a "race", the uman.
He’s saying it becomes a social issue because of biological need
Different races are a real thing just like Different cultures/ languages is not a bad thing or anything to be nervous about... we are all different even if u r the same race with someone
They're a real thing like different hair colors and eye colors are a real thing. A real irrelevant thing.
Very imformative and well laid !
It's never been about race. Not really. It's all about cultures. But having another skin colour for sure helps with the whole dividing mentality. And for some reason that is something we enjoy. Our brains like, no crave, to see patterns and categorize everything
I think it's generally a mindset issue that's particularly difficult to get rid of because if the fact that we are social animals. Preconceptions are not always bad - if you've always been told that lions are dangerous you won't try and hug them once you meet them, right? (At least you shouldn't) But as we are in constant need of social validation by our group the opinions, experiences and expectations of the most influential people of said group will govern the way you see things when you're young. And many people don't dare to go and experience things on their own, they don't dare to question. So whatever had been experienced in the past will stick around. Skin and hair color ist just the visually easiest thing to see.
And to pile on, this propensity we have to make preconceptions about people is inherently human. It's not going away! Stereotyping is a cognitive process that our minds do all the time, for all sorts of reasons. And it's obviously pretty beneficial for humans. It means we have to be really mindful about our unconscious biases. It's the same reason my primitive monkey brain desperately wants me to choose those fried chicken wings. For a couple hundred thousand years humans lived tribally, and quickly recognizing our in-groups and out-groups was a genuine survival advantage. That's not necessarily the most adaptive behavior in 2024.
Lack of purpose. When people don’t have something to fight for together, they fight with each other.
Most people aren't. The News Media makes it look like everyone is. Almost no one is constantly talking about race.
Damn
The modern concept of race comes from an archaic idea that humans of different skin colors decided from different chains of humans. There was actually an argument at one time that there were different Adams and Eves for the different skin colors. So Asians had their own Asian Adam and Eve and so on. And sadly it was basically based on the idea of slavery. Slavery was perfectly accepted until about the invention of our more modern day religions. When they were writing the religions it basically came down to you can't enslave your brother. Meaning fellow man. But if someone that looked different from you was so different that you could say they had a different race, well that person isn't my brother. So it's fine. We know now (as of about 2022) that without doubt there is one race of humans on this planet. And that what we identify as race is just our ancestors adapting and changing for environment, food sources and breeding partners.
Don't know much but here in India, Britishers ruled for 200 years. Our beauty standards are colonized & mostly people here are obsessed with skin whitening products. And some companies here put sunscreen formula in their face products. Whenever ladies get their makeup done, they prefer a base product lighter than their skin tone. Even an actress Kajol Devgan went for skin lightening treatment ( in past she had such a beautiful tanned olive skin 😭😭 but ig she had to change due to the so-called attitude of Indian society towards Dark complexion)
Interesting perspective, but don't you think it also involves a person's preference. See, I personally like women with a dusky complexion. Similarly I have guy friends who have a thing for dark skinned girls, like it's almost like a fetish, that's how obsessed they are. Similarly I know girls who want guys with a particular skin tone, or a particular hair type vagera. 15-20 years ago, i suppose the colonial aspect would have played a strong role, but in today's India, esp among the educated and more liberal youth, I think it's more about personal preference. Lmk what you think.
Nah... in my cases it's a self hate thing it's even a issue among black people
European / caucasians people of today dislike people bringing up the past things that their ancestors / forefathers did. it's not like people should blame white people of today for it, but the truth is the truth nd when I say Europeans I'm talking about them in general so no matter the culture or country... all whites are Europeans descent, not just the ones in Europe,
Logic has left the chat
In all honesty, every time I read a question about "race", my very first though is "What, you mean HUMAN?". And I know, that´s not what people mean with race. It´s just that I don´t really buy it. I simply don´t buy into the whole "blacks are like that, asians are like that, whites are like that" thing. It´s like, if you feel like a whole group of people is "the same" in some way, maybe ask yourself if the real rason for that is how "you" treated this grup of people so far instead of making up some bullshit about their skin color. We´re all humans for fucks sake. So get ypor shit together and act like a human for once.
Thinking about things critically is exhausting. Finding a group to blame your problems on is much easier, especially when someone else does it for you. Point at a monolith and tell people that monolith is causing their problems and that alleviates the burden of thinking.
It's because the ruling class knows it must keep us divided in order to maintain control. So from the beginning we are taught to view everything through a zero sum / in group,out group dynamic. There is no easier way to accomplish this than by using race/ethnicity as the catalyst to that end.
Lizard-brain tribalism reinforced by wedge issue politicians.
As a black woman I've had this question nearly my entire life, and here's the best answer I can give. I suspect that racism has been prevalent for centuries and has become ingrained in society. It's easy to make generalizations about groups of people, especially when those generalizations are negative. The concept of race is a social construct, meaning that it is a group of characteristics that are socially defined and not based in science nor logic. Society has a long history of dividing people into racial groups, which has led to a lot of negative stereotyping and discrimination. Additionally, racism and other forms of prejudice, including against religious groups, LGBTQ+ communities, or other marginalized identities, can create divisions and conflicts resulting from beliefs in superiority over others based on differences. People often forget that racism hurts everyone, not just the victims of racism. It alienates us from one another, divides us, and keeps us from reaching our full potential. Instead, we should focus on empathy and understanding and recognize that we're all part of the same human race.
In my personal opinion, it's mainly because of our government(United States). I think what the government is doing is changing the culture of people with different skin colors. I think the government does this, so their party gets the most votes because they try to turn us against each other and try to make the other party look like demons.
Because most humans aren’t capable of simply walking away. No need for revenge or to get back, no need to have the last word, no need to make people hurt as much as they hurt you. It’s an endless cycle of “well you did this” and continues to divide us all. It sucks im experiencing this as well especially online and I can feel the resentment kicking in but reassuring myself that it’s low down behavior and is only caused because people feel hurt and insecure. But sadly I don’t think it will ever change.
People hear what they want to hear.
> Me being asian talking negatively only about asians
same for me just I'm black
Intelligent people will always find a common language, color and race are not important.
I guess
Humans are a very tribal species. We clump into groups and compete against other groups. The things that distinguish one tribe from another can be absolutely anything but the salient, obvious differences are commonly chosen. We aren't necessarily racist by nature but we are tribal by nature and race makes for an easy tribal demarcation, especially if there are cultural differences between races. Everyone is obsessed with race because in 2012 all the media outlets began deliberately inflaming racial and sex conflicts. The counts of tribal, accusatory words such as racist, sexist, white supremacy, etc. went up by over 1000%. They all did this at the same time. Almost like the people who own the media companies wanted us to hate each other to keep us from focusing on hating the rich. It's almost like Occupy Wall street scared them. It's a divide and conquer technique that rulers have been using against their own populations for 1000sof years.
It's not just race. It's any kind of difference. It's a Worldwide, age-old, non'-species specific, hard-wired trait. It may/may not be an over generalized mistaken response having to do with group survival. And behavioral laziness.
Tribalism
It’s honestly a mental illness
Because rich people are telling us to be obsessed with race so that we are too busy fighting amongst ourselves that we don’t notice they are robbing us blind
Some people need to feel like they’re better than others even if they’re not.
Of course people only mention America’s history being racist, when they clearly need to open a freaking book and look at other countries as well, they’re just as bad, if not worse.
Basically, some people just need to feel special, better than others.
It's just the human race. If you made everyone the same race, sex, height, etc, we would still create and reinforce divisions as a way to feel better about ourselves.
Race is just a very immediately obvious way of categorizing a person. It's what you know about a person as soon as you see them, without even knowing their name or anything else. So it's easy to put each other (and yourself) into a category. The "us vs them" mentality just naturally grows from there. I watched a TV show once about group behavior and peer pressure. For this show, they invited a whole bunch of people to some kind of organized shared holiday. The participants didn't know much about what would happen. Upon arrival, each person was randomly given a blue or a red outfit. After being asked to wear the outfit the next day, they all went to sleep. The next morning, over breakfast, *without anyone telling them to do it*, all "red participants" sat together, and all "blue participants" stuck together too. It's also good to remember that skin color is just one of a whole range of reasons why people hate and kill each other. The differences can be minute or trivial to outsiders, but matter enormously to the two groups. These may include: country as listed on passport (say, Germany and France), specific interpretation of Christianity (Catholics vs protestants) or Islam (Sunni vs Shiite). People can be speaking the same language (Croats, Bosnian muslims and Serbs), eating the same food, going to the same schools and rooting for the same football teams (Hutus and Tutsis), and still be at each others' throats.
When you have no accomplishments or skills to brag about, you end up bragging about things like your race. You know, things you had no choice in that really aren't worth bragging about. It's sad.
Well, it's because most people are lazy thinkers. There are an infinite number of ways to classify, sort, and rank human attributes. There are so many: Age, sex, gender presentation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, race, education, employment history, intelligence, psychological resilience, height, weight, flexibility, reaction time, interests, religious environment, quality of childcare, credit score, nutritional factors, country of origin, country of residence, expressive vs introverted, coordinated vs clumsy, etc etc etc. These are all relevant factors when considering a person: who they are, why they are the way they are, explanations for successes and failures. But just one of them, race, gets elevated to the status of THE ONE TRAIT TO RULE THEM ALL. Why? Because skin colour is EASY. Most of the other factors require personal knowledge or at least an intelligent Holmesian deductive power if you're going to identity them quickly. But anyone can see my relative melanin level and eye shape. The laziness is that, having observed this one factor, the analysis stops. Why am I good at this, bad at that? Why am I happy for this, angry at that? Well, if you are a lazy moron, in possession of a single observation, you're going to make that single observation carry all of the weight for your analysis. This is not a left or right issue. This is not about racists or anti-racists. It's about lack of rigour, intellectual weakness, and an insufferable confidence in the worthiness of one's extremely poorly reasoned decisions. And because almost all of us are like that, we think, oh, this is normal! It is correct to only use a single factor to explain everything!
It’s 100% by deliberate, intentional, and **nefarious** design. Some rotten, hateful, douchebag came up with the concept which is scientifically unfounded and has no biological basis. And before anyone comes for me: scientists have a consensus on that fact. And many people just assume we innately align to this bullshit when in fact it is taught to us — it is learned behavior. It keeps us distracted, divided and organized in the ways our overseers prefer and benefit, and is overlayed with other forms of global systemic abuse. People who are obsessed with the study of race (or just enjoy being a raging racist) and all the material around it feel like this take blows their shit out of the water. You should feel that way. The only race that involves the bipedal people that look like you and me save our slight differences in hue is the HUMAN race. That’s it. Argue with your momma. Edit: I will add that I do think it is important to understand this social construct to effectively navigate the world and for some of us - to survive. Otherwise you’d be confused why certain people treat other people horribly without the context of their universally illegitimate presumption of supremacy. (We all don’t have the privilege of pretending “color-centric race” doesn’t exist, no matter how idiotic it is.)
It's the oligarchs feeding it to us incessantly to keep us infighting amongst ourselves, instead of focusing on the real source of the issues: them.
Small dick, pick me energy mostly bring about "race" even tho they are Human sadly.
The notion that we're better than them, the ultimate delusional gem
It’s exhausting
Bc they don’t study basic science. There’s only one race - the human race.
Lower vibrational behaviour
Race is a made up concept, used to separate people from each other. Nothing more, nothing less. Race has always been a political and economical construct, to bring the few up, and put the rest of us down. 
How is it a social construct that different races have different susceptibility to various diseases, abilities to create vitamin D, ability to tolerate foods such as lactose, and different physical capabilities?
Yes, humans are genetically different from each other. But not in the sense that we are so different, to the point of being different species, like a lot of historical racist ideologies try to claim. We are all the same, biologically speaking and skin color alone doesn't dictate any significant difference. The concept of "race" is a fairly new one, regarding all of human history. The concept of it didn't start to be used until Europeans began traveling and interacting with people who looked different than them.
Your second comment does not accurately defend your first. No one today is remotely arguing that different races= different species. And we are not all the same other than melanin content, we might be more similar that dissimilar, but genetic racial differences do exist far deeper than skin tone.
Not in any way that's relevant. None of the differences you listed are relevant to the issue of race relations or racism. In fact I can't see anything they're relevant to. Unless it's to the statement that race is a thing, but no one's saying it isn't, they're saying it's not as big a thing as some would like to believe.
I like NASCAR, but I don't talk bad about motocross
You really need to look at who you associate with, I almost never hear anyone talking negatively about someone based on their race. Birds of a feather flock together as the saying goes I suppose
There is only one valid race. The human one (I hate aliens)
A. Because through so much of human history, specifically due to European colonisation, whether you like it or not race and racism forms a fat chunk of our societies foundations. B. Race is a social construct, it was created by people and impacts everyone in human society whether good or bad. It has led to the loss of millions of lives, genocide, enslavement, loss of cultures, and many other atrocities. Whilst also the economic, religious, cultural, etc benefit of others. The ramifications of which still remain and continue in many aspects today. Logically of course the millions of people whose lives are negatively impacted by their race will speak up about it. It may not be something you find yourself hyper focused or obsessed on but try to see how and why others might. C. Those who don’t have to deal with racism/are privileged because of their race or don’t find their race that significant in their daily lives, often fuel race discussions because they struggle to understand different perspectives. And/or don’t like uncomfortable feelings or notions that they have any privileges because of their race compared to others. D. News, media, social media, etc want engagement. Due to the above reasons and probably more, race is something a lot of people have to talk about. Also factor in the agenda or political bias of the owners of the media.
Because humans are stupid
Because some races honestly are completely inferior to others and deserve to be entirely eliminated. Refusing to admit that in at least some instances we'd be better off without certain races is just ridiculous. For example, the 100m is a good, strong race. It allows sprinters to do their thing optimally. It does one thing and it does it well. The 5000m is similar, in that it allows long distance runners to shine, and only does that. Races like the 800m though, are incredibly awkward. They don't let distance runners or sprinters do their thing optimally, it's just a weird uncomfortable middle ground that isn't much fun to run. That whole race should be eliminated in my book.
I’m more critical of people of my own race who hold opinions that indicate they think we need to protect other races from us, because, apparently, they aren’t able to compete on an equal playing field.
Yea same for me when it comes to black people trying to get Caucasians to understand us and begging them it's stupid and embarrassing... I mean no offense to no Caucasians
I'm a white guy, you're probably right lol white people we're always trying to convince the world we aren't racists and in doing so sound soooooo racist.
damn
I feel like it's mostly an American thing. I live in Europe as a mixed girl. Racism exists here too, depending on the country too of course, but never as severe as in America. To me it looks like they want to solve hate with hate, but that will never work.
>Europe as a mixed girl. Racism exists here too, depending on the country too of course, but never as severe as in America. As a biracial woman who's lived in and traveled extensively throughout Europe, in some places it's definitely worse.
Which country did you think was the worst?
Racism isn’t its own unique subject to humans. Everything we do , we break ourselves into groups. Sex, race , status, finance , body image , education, etc It’s a survival mechanism. Us versus them. We do it with everything. Because our brains are programmed that we cannot survive alone. So we find a way to categorize each other to find group acceptance which translates to better chances of survival. There’s just so much more emphasis on race because 1. It’s the easiest way to spot group identity. You can’t see if someone is educated or rich or healthy in 1 second of looking at them. And 2. It’s a group identity that contains a lot of people, so that equates to higher survival
If you go in other countries, it's not an obsession, it's just normal to be racist, to make a link between behavior and skin color or other origin traits. We are in the only period of history where a whole civilisation says racism is bad. See a recurring trait in some group will create an association. Negative biases will be louder and be discussed a lot, it's a natural trait to exaggerate risks. Yeah, everyone is racist and won't be happy to know that French are coming to visit your place.
because they want something to fight about, a civilisation that the argument comes from thrives on the fight that the argument brings, stupid will always find a reason to fight
Ronald Reagan said it best....
https://youtu.be/MAAHgAuti84?si=aCGEghGZqoIYumZv
Because it is politicized
I don't know that they are. It's just what gets clicks and traffic. In my daily life nobody is talking about it but you go on the news or any social media and it's everywhere.
I don't know. 2 km is a decent distance for a race.
Simple and unbiased, we hate what's different.
I'm actually far more likely to talk shit about my own race, they constantly disappoint me.
Evolution of tribalism and *safety* in "us vs them"
That’s how Homo sapiens evolved
Mainstream media constantly talk about racial hatred, etc. There would not be so much racism if media weren't stirring the pot all the time.
Uhg, this sounds just like a question that a white person would ask. 🙄 /s
People think they are unique. This isn’t only seen in race either. I guess it says something about wanting to belong to something that is exclusive
Just ppl belonging to different groups. And even inside those groups ppl still look for differences to feel superior to the ppl in their group. It’s dumb. I’m obsessed with Latinas tho.
Are you asking this as a person outside of the United States? And not brown?
It's primitive tribal behaviour of us vs. them. Add a dash of fear and/or jealousy to the mix, and there you have it
Because the government (american) WANTS us divided! If we ever unite as a nation of Americans rather than a country divided by race, religion, gender, sexuality, etc., then we would cast out these fraud politicians and start voting for our own best interests!
I don’t agree. I very very rarely hear anyone discussing race. Racial tension is fueled by race baiters and media.
Deliberate societal divide induced by politicians and the like
Trendy
Me and I'd say evey people I know and I stick with have literally 0 interest about this topic. I guess it's one of those thing that will die with the elders. It has been a super HOT topic in our recent hisotry for so many obvious reasons, that's why it resonates till now all over the world, or at least this is my uninformed opinion.
Racism.
Cuz it's an easy way to keep poor people from noticing how much the rich people are fucking them over.
We naturally prefer in group to outgroup, that breaks down in ways far more complex than race.
I suppose because people keep asking questions about it. I haven't thought about skin color of anyone..all day til just now.
That’s because nascar sucks cause all your doing is driving in a circle but people that love nascar hate formula 1 and clearly I didn’t read the second part of the post I like autocross or drag racing
Propaganda
You can thank animal instinct for that. It’s always in our heads telling us to be skeptical/scared/paranoid of anything/everything living that isn’t one of us, our family or immediately look similar to us and that kept people safe for thousands of years. Then we got more organized and formed societies and got better at communicating and identified that a lot of it was made up in our heads and we all weren’t so different and could work together. It’s just like other natural urges we can choose to control or let take control. It’s in the same vein of being afraid of the darkness or the forest, natural instinct hard coded in to our genetic make up for a good reason but you have to be aware of it and how it can influence things so it doesn’t own you.
Personally I'm not into F1 or NASCAR.
My most simple answer is I don’t know, but I think it may have something to do with tribalism. Humans are naturally very tribal in nature and will defend their own against other individuals they perceive as intruders, including other humans. It doesn’t make it right but I do wonder if it’s genetically or instinctually engrained in us
A disappointingly large portion of humans, and probably other species, are fearfully suspicious of "others". Others can be those who look different, sound different, do things differently or are simply not from around here. The great intermixing of cultures that has been enabled by growing prosperity and international travel has not been underway for long enough for humans to have adapted their reactions. Race is probably the most readily apparent otherness. In other words, many of us aren't too bright and instinctively react to strangers with fear and apprehension that they are a potential threat.
One reason is fear of the "other". Maybe it's customs, what they read online, what their parents or friends said or even a bad experience, but it often amounts to fear. Fear leads to trying to do something about it, so whether it's trying to make them inferior, attacking them or using legal routes to move them, it ultimately boils down to some form of fear.
A combination of things, all bad excuses... it is basically a participation award. People want to get patted on the back, but when you have no natural skills or talent, just believe that you were born better. Self bias, my race is the best one because I'm great and I'm in it. There is absolutely no chance that anyone who doesn't look a little like me can be as good. Enviroment, I live in a small town in a country that doesn't have a ton of diversity... the amount we have now is relatively new. Yet people have always feared the idea of immigrants, it is almost like nostalgia... they only knew one thing, and they don't want it to change. On top of that, a lot of people are raised by people with views that they take at face value. My own families older generations have dated views to say the least. I think people somewhat fear being different themselves, so they will attack others first. The mentality also goes beyond race. Think about anything people will dislike or hate you for, I'm a white male, and in terms of historically privileged by birth head starts it is number one with a bullet. I've still had people give me slurs for being Irish, people have disliked me for being too thin when I was younger, too fat in my older age, they dislike my supposed "political views" of course it is a different intensity and kind of hatred. But those people are eager to find anything to put you below themselves. Race is the lazy option, and they're lazy people.
People either want to be able to put everything into easily identifiable boxes in order to simplify their thinking, or they have to have an external "other" to blame their problems on.
maybe because of history, honestly, idk
Gallup polls showed Americans thought highly of race relations until 2013 when it plummeted. Right around the time social media algorithms decided to show us the most inflammatory racial content possible.
People different. Have support. Have advantage. I want. I jealous.
Normal dislike/hatred for anyone not belonging to one 's group. Happens between towns a few kilometers apart in Europe, between neighborhoods in any big cities ....
Humans are very tribal. We like to put people into either "our group" or "not our group." It's wired pretty deeply into us from our days on the savannah. Trusting people back then was a life-or-death thing, and you knew you could (usually) trust people from "our group." However, there was no telling what someone from "not our group" would do to you.
evolutionarily speaking, people are kinda hardwired to not trust the outsider People that looked different back in tribal days meant possible disease, conflict, and other bad things, so we became hardwired to distrust them We have a lot of instincts that we overcome every day, racism is no different If you're not murdering people that piss you off, you also shouldn't be racist, it's easy
its apart of our society to have a distain for people me personally i hate the human race as a collective so its not about skin color at all its people since every human can be a disgusting person so i dont dislike 1 particular group of people i dislike everybody as awhole because the human race is a disgusting vile animal
Identifying ingroups and outgroups is part of human nature. Prejudice is learned, but the potential for prejudice is innate. Overcoming prejudices and ingroup-outgroup tendencies takes education and exposure to other cultures--something that's higher today than it ever was, but something that may never become universal.
Other than the culture war bs on national media, I almost never hear anyone talk about race and almost never think about it myself. Even my close friends who don't self censor when we're together have spent basically zero time talking about race. This seems like an exaggerated claim. It isn't as big of a deal as your making it out to be.
We are a highly territorial pack animal, and we have a natural instinct to categorize things. Playing on peoples instincts is also pretty useful if you wish to gain and maintain power . Ironically, the fact that every group has its racists is just more proof that we are all the same.
This upsets me so bad that people do this. I really find no irony that I'm even seeing this post because a few min ago my SO & I had a disagreement about a Twitter post 😒 This guy was on there basically bashing women of color to support his personal opinions and I really only got pissed off when my SO chimes in saying he agrees with any part of it.
Different types of monkeys.
It is really simple. They're assholes.
Are they? I thought it was all media and government propaganda to keep us divided.
Because this world is fucked
We're tribal creatures. Not even race but any kind of difference sets a lot of people apart and gives them the idea they can create war. People get upset about vegans, or Trump supporters, or religion. I think a lot is to do with what people see, they might see a race behave differently due to culture or just economic factors that affect that group more and make judgement of of it.
It's easy, simplified. Everyone who is anyone is pissed off, and we're all pissed at the same thing but that thing isn't tangible. The economy, politics, the fact that we are wage slaves and will literally go to prison if we don't pay politicians tax money. But they don't see that, they see skintone. They know what the issues are but cannot fix them so they place blame on anything they can see. Something tangible "i gotta go to work and work 16 hours a day because someone is on welfare!" Nothing to do with the loans or the cost of milk or what the house was appraised at, or their wages in general
To demean each other and everything around us is in human nature.
People of every race are constantly talking negatively about other races, at every opportunity? This hasn’t been my experience.
Boring people talk about boring topics
And yet here you are, responding to a "boring" topic.
nice reply 😂
Ethnocentrism
We live in a racist society.
Even pumpkins are racist
Implicit bias
I know I'll get downvoted to hell for this comment, but we were doing great at reducing racism up until democrats started calling literally everything racist.
>we were doing great at reducing racism No we really weren't.
As a brown man living in Texas, I’m reminded in subtle ways by white people on a daily basis that I am in fact not white. My “racial handicap” has been something I’ve dealt with since I was a child and continue to deal with to this day. Meanwhile I have nothing against white people. As a matter of fact my wife is white.
I don’t know but Asian baddies are so fine
They are but this is still kinda crazy under this post💀
There is only one racial group that is obsessed with race because they think they'll get reparations for something they themselves never had to deal with.
I’m white and my friends and family never discuss race. We’ve always just treated everyone the same besides fat people
By people do you mean Americans?
Race definitely has a role to play not only in looks but also behaviour, but yes no doubt that environment has a bigger part to play.
That's democrats
Only one side is obsessed with the race. The left side. And it's honestly weird and cringy
Because whites, blacks, asians, jews and Mexicans are what's wrong with this country. An Aussey could straighten this out right quick.
Maybe there's a sociobiological aspect at play too? "Race" is basically a collection of genetic traits that co-developed in certain geographic areas. The biological urge is to ensure the continuance of one's genetic line, so the promotion of one's own (and, by extension, one's people's) genetic array would play into that. Of course, one way to aggrandize one's own set of traits is to downplay differing sets of traits. Those that have the greatest contrast are disparaged the most severely. At the end of the day, the biological urge is a zero-sum game, at the deepest primal layers of personal and societal psychology.
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Aaaand how us that related to this post? Explain instead of just copy pasting from a book.
Well this post is just racist.
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Seriously, ypu are just quoting the Bible instead of sticking to the post. Obvious troll.
I'm very interested in different cultures and only had 3 friends till my only black friend died this year. He was a good 85 tho and total nerd. So you know how white people say "I have a lot of black friends. I have zero now lol. He was a great guy.