"It is normal to be prejudiced."

Dear America: A few things this black woman would like you to know about race


It is normal to be prejudiced.

..... How can Lou Dobbs, a wealthy, white man, unequivocally proclaim how "progressive" America is about race? How the hell would he know?

We just need you to admit that you don't know. And then we need you to listen.

..........

Good people can be prejudiced. Where did everyone get the idea that prejudiced people were mustache-twirling, one-dimensional villains? The idea keeps everyday people from honestly evaluating their biases, because "only bad people are prejudiced."

..............

The sin is not that we are biased in this way--and we are ALL biased. The sin is that we pretend that we aren't biased and fail to address the inequities that our prejudice creates.

...................

It is way past time to have a real conversation about race.
But America, are you willing to listen as well as speak?

more at:
http://www.whattamisaid.blogspot.com/

I've seen racism surface here on DU, especially regarding Native Americas (often called "illegal aliens).

Once Anglo Americans realize they are the immigrants, and the Natives are the Natives, not vice-versa, some progress may be possible undoing that long-standing racist falsehood. There is no reason for a Native American on a reservation in AZ to be called Indian, and for the same Natives cousins on the same reservation, except across the Mexican border, to be considered a "Mexican."

Hello America, Mexicans are Native Americans!
Hello America, Europeans are the Illegal Aliens!
Who invited them to invade the Americas?

NOT the 60 MILLION who died as a result!

Guess that's ok for the Sheriff to break the law like that. :shrug: And driving while brown is now also something we need to crack down on, because well we are short on oil. :sarcasm:

i think they are all stupid, lousy, and disgusting

At a wedding I remember sitting at a table where my niece was sitting with her boyfriend. I always thought the guy was weird but that day sealed it. He was a redneck with all the trimmings. I can't remember how I started the conversation, but I remember saying that the normal way to be is cooperative and helpful and that prejudice needs to be learned. Now, I was raised in a Latin American community and cooperation and self-sacrifice for the better good was part of the culture at that time. The redneck jumped in with a scowl, "No! prejudice is the normal way people are. You tend to distrust anything that isn't like you."

Well, I was speechless. Though I can now understand where he's coming from. I believe that we're all lumps of clay when we're born and what we see around us as we grow up, helps us to bring out qualities within us to help us cope with the world. If our world is a competitive one, one that acknowledges the winners, we will probably grow up distrustful of everyone around us. If our world is a truly difficult one with few resources and one that requires cooperation to survive, then strong bonds of cooperation develop and, in order to squeeze out whatever joy we can in the world, we would probably be a culture much like some latin American countries. Some would call it socialism, others just a community with strong bonds.

The human mind has a structure that is passed on through time parent to child. Over time certain adaptations were made in the structure of the mind. We can change those preconceptions but it takes discipline and a rigorous search for the truth.

One of the feature of the human mind is we categorize. Me, you. An orange is similar to an apple as they are both fruit and edible, but have different colors and insides. So noting the difference in people and groups of people is natural.

Also an adaptation is group cohesion. We tend to like our children more than a guy on the street. We care more about a cousin than someone who we have never met. It served an useful goal when we were living in family groups (and the human murder rate was much higher than today).

One problem with group cohesion is it leads to racism. It is a cognitive malfunction, but through use of human reason we can overcome it.

Lump of clay - nice in theory, absolutely wrong on the facts.

(This <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases> is a list of cognitive biases. These are errors in the human thinking mechanism. I find the subject personally interesting and professionally useful. Cheers.)

I don't believe we compartmentalized as quickly as you think. think back in primitive times when they didn't have mirrors. How would an adopted infant or toddler even know he looked different, unless he had a constant reminder that he was different? Why would a child even consider sorting the colors if he grew up in a culture that was multi-cultural? How does a child with a grandmother who is full of warts end up loving that face, even when everyone else thinks it's hideous?

If a child grows up in a culture that accepts him or her unconditionally, she doesn't have to be concerned with developing their compartmentalizing skills. They learn to make relationships on another basis. Simply, who is kind to me, and who is not?

You are making utopian arguments. The number of multicultural societies in world history is frighteningly small. Even now they are scarce.

In primitive times the necessity of group identification was even more imperative (because of the violence). A child bonds with their grandparent, mother with child. Oxytocin is secreted in their brains. Another evolutionary process to insure bonding.

A child could learn to love unconditionally - but it is a learned process. We are innately racist, but we can change.

Neuroscience is in it's infancy. There is so much we do not know. Many beliefs are going to be challenged - like I am challenging your belief that we are not innate racists. You believe it but I think the data proves otherwise. The easiest proof I have is simply this - what society on earth is not racist? China? No, most Chinese are horrible racists. Russia? How well do they like their Chechen or Roma? US? Need I say more? Africa? See Rwanda genocide of 1994 or how well the !Kung folks get on. If something is prevalent throughout the world there is a pretty good chance that it is an innate behavior.

Many different colors. I learned that education transcends color, so it wasn't truly racist, at least not directly. There was a social class system, but people could rise above their station. Yet, once you were at the top, you could stay there even though your family was destitute, as long as you were kind and not abusive to people.

So, I say, how can anyone really take your argument and run with it, if you've never really experienced a truly multi-cultured society? Even you admit they are rare so how would you know, if not academically? And, yes, they are rare, because the last two millennium (and beyond) has been all about conquering submissive cultures. It has been a history of aggressions. Therefore, if you would like to say that we are evolving into a culture that compartmentalizes because we are being assimilated by conquering cultures, I would tend to see how that theory is possible. But compartmentalizing is evolutionary, and not a dominant trait in all people.

will have a difficult time understanding your words, perceptions and understanding. BABIES DON'T CARE ABOUT DIFFERENCES. Babies care about who is bringing the food, answering their cries, tending to their comfort, playing with them, putting them in the center of the universe. They don't give a rat's ass about society's "ranking" of those who perform the tasks until they are "socialized."

Can't stop rape--hardwired.
Can't stop war--hardwired.
Can't stop racism--hardwired.

Might as well blow your brains out because we're all just rotten pigs. Better too accept and maybe even embrace your rotten pigdom. Pretty funny how the neoliberal university manages to frame its science to excuse its own behavior and the behavior of its larger culture. Also amusing when the crappy science digests reiterate this nonsense: you're all hardwired to be savages! might as well shop til ya drop! Brought to you from the people who invented: the gay gene, aspartame is good, and Ewen Cameron.

The notion that any empirical science is going to explain ethics, love, or the meaning of life is unlikely. I'm sorry but I hate the 'we're all hardwired' excuse as much as I hate the 'we're all blank slates' excuse. That's why overarching theories of moral consciousness all tend to have their detractors.

Do you care that humans are mostly evolving away from violence and increasing levels of trust show for non-family members -- both good things? Not all is grim. But being a know-nothing is an ugly spot to be in. We are born with traits and have to fight against them through education.

The modern form of western racism, basically defined as the distrust or hatred of someone perceived to be of a different race from you, has existed for about 500 years or so. Mostly it was created during the African slave trade and colonialism. For example, if you took a British person from the 12th century and introduced him to a Moor, he's more likely to be prejudiced based on religion rather than race, and is more likely to try to convert the Moor. Oddly enough, he would actually have other prejudices that are actually positive, for example, he may think the Moor is hellbound, but he will also assume that the Moor is much better educated than him and be able to treat ailments and injuries better than fellow Brits.

Indeed most prejudices in the world are based on culture rather than race, hell, there technically weren't "races" until around the 19th century, when they were "scientifically" defined. Most "races" as defined today were created, more or less, due to geographic or climatic isolation, not because people consciously or otherwise, didn't want to interact.

The population of humans on the planet was quite low, and stayed that way until agriculture and civilization arose. So war and clashes between humans was kept largely to the minimum. What tribe in their right mind would risk their best hunters in fighting other tribes when its better to exchange information and cooperate in hunting animals? Most tribes of humans may only meet only once, maybe twice a year, if that, do you really think they would have spent that time killing each other? This isn't to say humans were totally peaceful in this time period, but any fighting would have been small short lived skirmishes, not war as is defined today. It was much more likely that such encounters lead to trade, cooperation in hunts, and sexual encounters.

It wasn't until the rise of civilization that humans actually had the resources to fight each other in wars. This also lead to cultures that were less mobile and greatly expanded cultural development, due to the specialization of occupations and the rise of different classes. This lead to greater competition for land to raise crops and domesticated animals, so the idea of pointing out differences between people, based mostly on culture was useful in justifying said wars.

Some cultures arose, such as Rome, where cultural chauvinism took precedence over any delineation based on what we call race today. An example of this would be recent genetic studies in Great Britain which showed that somewhere around 9 in 10 British people had ancestors from Northern Africa that date back to around the 1st to 2nd centuries C.E. Around the time when Roman armies occupied the Isle. These Africans were soldiers who, as some people put it, "went local" and married local women and raised families in Britain, whose descendants still live today.

This isn't to say that Roman society was paradise, or even nice and forward thinking, quite the contrary, human rights didn't really exist, at least not on any moral or ethical level. Slavery was rampant, classes were stratified, etc. However, none of this was based on the color of people's skin, but rather on where your families social standing was. It was possible to move up or down on the social ladder, even for slaves, but it was extremely difficult and rare.

Our modern definition of race would have mystified a Roman citizen, to them, culture and assimilation were much more important than the color of someone's skin. The Roman empire wasn't even unusual in this practice, most large ancient empires, from Alexander's empire, to ancient Egypt, Persia, India, China, all the way up to Genghis Khan's Mongolian empire all basically did the same thing. Racism, or extreme prejudice, of conquered peoples would have ripped such nations apart.

If anything is innate in human nature, it wouldn't be racism, but rather provincialism, and it would be the way we are raised that would define how that provincialism would manifest itself. Whether it manifests as ethnic prejudice to outright racism or cultural or national chauvinism, those are based on how we are raised, not necessarily inborn. Even that is questionable, the nature vs. nurture debate is far from resolved, and evidence from the archaeological record seems to indicate that before civilization arose, cooperation took precedence over competition. Given that, its more likely that provincialism, in all its various forms, is one of the results of civilization, rather than some innate trait.

I was sloppy in some of my definitions. When I said racist is meant disliking people of different skin tones or more specifically "other people"-those not of the same tribe, nation etc. You are correct that the modern notions of races and racism - with the implicit academic definitions of racism intertwined with the power structure - did not exist until recently. However the "other" has always existed and will continue to exist because of the wy our brains are made.

I also must disagree about pre-civilized societies being more peaceful. The archaeological evidence is clear - pre-civilization mankind was much more violent than today. They did wage war (hell, chimpanzees wage war) but only to the extent that their technology and organizational; skills allowed them to. Modern stone age people in the Amazon, New Guinea etc. are also much more violent.

Cheers.

Their population has been under pressure for years, and they didn't have the one option that humans had 100,000 years ago, and that was to move. Its certainly possible that their behavior is a recent phenomenon, similar to Elephant herds that "declare war" on human settlements in Africa and India. Usually, when Elephants attack humans, its caused by either rogue males who are herdless(not even all male herds), or its because humans act stupid around them. But over the past decade or so, entire elephant herds, which usually are quite placid to human neighbors, have been becoming more violent, tearing villages apart and even killing people. Is this natural behavior, or a response to human pressure when humans encroach on their territory?

In addition to this, there is no clear evidence about pre-civilized human behavior one way or the other, there are some cases of violence, and there are also cases of humans trading technology, resources, and culture. Why would humans of the past be much more violent than today anyways? That makes no sense, generally, violence is most prevalent in societies under tremendous pressure because of lack of resources and/or overpopulation. The total human population during pre-civilized times didn't exceed 5 million, total, on the entire planet. In addition to this, such things as resource depletion due to, for example, famine or drought, were less likely simply because people of the time moved with herds of prey animals, and hence were actually less vulnerable to the climate than humans today.

Thanks, and I'm totally recommending.

When I was in high school, back in the original civil rights era, I spent some time wrestling with the question of whether I was prejudiced. I concluded that while I did harbor some racial prejudices, I also had a whole boatload of other prejudices -- that I tended to assume fat people were self-indulgent, people with Midwestern accents were provincial and narrow-minded, and people who read religious tracts on the bus were mindless fundamentalists -- and that I needed to work on all of them.

Since then, I've concluded that "prejudice" is just a negative term for the hardwired human tendency to make snap judgments about people based on their appearance and to have a suspicion of those who appear "different" or out of place. There's nothing "bad" about this tendency in itself -- it evolved as a survival skill and can still be a valid form of self-protection under the right circumstances.

The trouble is that, by and large, we no longer live under the "right" circumstances. Unlike your average Stone Ages tribal member, we live surrounded by people who aren't exactly like us, and we have to deal with them as our fellows and not as aliens. This makes some people extremely uneasy -- they try to avoid those situations and may react badly when they can't. Those people are the genuine racists.

The rest of us -- well, we may have our moments of "pre-judging" people if we merely pass by them on the street or in a store. But as long as we can get past our initial snap judgments and deal with everyone as "us" and not as "them," we shouldn't feel we need to be ashamed of having those fleeting impressions.

It's just the way we're wired - Human beings have a lot of instincts that come pre-packaged. We're not, as a poster above put it, "lumps of clay" - we're more like prefabbed ceramic figurines that you paint and glaze yourself.

The trick is, we have the ability to set our instincts aside and not respond to them. Yes, we may be prejudiced, but we can push through it - or we can throw it up in front of us, let it turn into bigotry, and so on.

we have another loser.

I first read about in a Simone de Beauvoir book many years ago.

"A person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self (see self (psychology), self (philosophy), and self-concept) and other phenomena and cultural units.

Lawrence Cahoone (1996) explains it thus:

"What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way."

It has been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. For example, Edward Said's book Orientalism demonstrates how this was done by western societies—particularly England and France—to 'other' those people in the 'Orient' who they wanted to control. The concept of 'otherness' is also integral to the understanding of identities, as people construct roles for themselves in relation to an 'other' as part of a fluid process of action-reaction that is not necessarily related with subjugation or stigmatization."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other

"What to me seemed like a reasoned statement that acknowledges the reality of our country's past and present, made Lou Dobbs clutch his pearls in horror."

LOL

And I agree with the author - that quote from Rice *was* a reasoned statement. Perhaps one of the few she's ever made.

"The sin is not that we are biased in this way--and we are ALL biased. The sin is that we pretend that we aren't biased and fail to address the inequities that our prejudice creates."

I recommend this book: "Uprooting Racism" by Paul Kivel for anyone struggling with the pretending.

That was a fantastic post. And her points about the "dull ache" of modern racism were so insightful and true they almost brought a tear to my eye. Thanks alot for sharing and telling us What Tami Said.

I was living outside of Chicago in the 70s in an all white neighborhood.

At a Saturday night block party I was talking to a middle-aged lady who lived a few houses away.
Nice woman. What was called a 'housewife' back then.
I guess we'd call her a stay-at-home-mom now.

Somehow we got on the subject of race relations and prejudice.
And she said "I think everyone has prejudices of one kind or another. I just try very hard not to pass my own to my children. I'm sure they will form their own, soon enough. But I don't want them to be burdened with mine."

And I thought that was pretty cool.
So is your post, BTW.
K&R

And like one poster said it was probably a good survival trait millennia ago. Even today, to an extent, seeing something out of your normal experience and becoming suspicious or cautious might be a good thing to keep you safe and alive.

The problem is when those prejudices and biases morph into value determinations. That people are inferior, less than human, undeserving of fair treatment or equal opportunities, because they're different. Creating laws that reflect those biases and prejudices institutionalize those value determinations.

I think that is what most people refer to as prejudices; the value determinations we make on things, people or ideas that are different than those we hold.