Why and where do you think racial tensions started ?

Question

I'm hispanic and I have always seen racial discrimination going on everywhere, and especially in films. It upsets me so much that in this time, where everyone has equal rights, we still have so much racial tension between all of the different races ?

Answer 1

It most likely started the first time one tribe encountered another. Fearing the other tribe, one would bastardize them to keep their own people from joining the enemy. It would have to be after tribal groups were formed because before that, there would ave been no social unity to distinguish what group an individual was associated with. But when a tribe encounters another, they are very mysterious and what is strange tends to be frightening. But I think it took its most drastic turn into what we now know as racism when European countries began to colonize other lands. These 'great' European settlers definitely thought they were more intelligent, cultured, rational,... than the civilizations that they were colonizing creating a distinction between 'us and them.' From then on, people tend to get it in their heads that it is alright to believe you are better than another people. It became socially acceptable after colonization.

Answer 2

tension between races, genders, ages, sexual preferences and even music preferences have always excisted. We just have to as a whole learn to deal with our differences in a good positive manner.

Answer 3

i would say it all started during the crusades when the white man came to the holy land and decided to stir things up

Answer 4

I think that racism (better called discrimination) has been around as long as humans have been able to interact with their environment. When a living creature is born, it is a xenophobic being who curiously starts to seek and protect himself from all that surrounds it. On human beings, we change from a safe environment (our mother's womb) to an unknown environment full of strange things, objects, creatures and humans. From that point on, when curiosity invades our thoughts, we start to classify all elements in life.

Now, in history, discrimination has happened all over and everywhere, even in closed cultures. Ancient mesoamerican civilizations were known to discriminate their own, hence they created social classes their way.
In medieval ages, people who suffered some sort of unknown disease, like leper, were outcasted from their families, their cultural groups, and labeled as heretics, witches, or cursed by "the devil". In the cruzades, most muslim foreigners that entered the european continent were called "moors", a definition that was given at first to african slaves, and since they all saw that they came from the southern roads (though they could have come from different origin) they were labeled as such.
Even in Ancient Rome, romans thought of themselves to be the "greatest culture to roam the world" and a few kilometers away from their empire, small groups of people lived on their own... what did the romans called them? Barbarics.
In our latest 20th Century, Hitler wanted to create a "pure breed" human kind, and so he despised and murdered thousands and thousands of jewish (and it has been known that some of the murdered ones in concentration camps were not at all jewish, but had the distinctive traits of one, as germans thought to be).

I'm hispanic as well, and I've suffered though discrimination as well, even been "mislabeled" as a jewish, as a muslim, and even as a dealer just because of the way I look. To count on recent events, I went on a trip to Puerto Rico on transit through Miami to visit my girlfriend, and I was stopped and interrogated by "Homeland Security" only because I am of latinamerican descent, and my spanish accent is quite similar to a colombian accent, and because my first name and last name are WAY TOO COMMON in their database to match the profile of any latin american drug dealer. My interrogation was really morally insulting and degrading, the police officers felt empowered over me to wrongfully accuse me of delivering "illegal substances" to the United States.... I just wanted to see my girlfriend, and instead I got delayed in a small room filled with xenophobic beings who thought of anyone as a potential danger just because of the way you are and the way you were raised. Yet I had nothing to hide, I collaborated as any other person would do, and I even smiled through the whole process, u know why? Cause there's no way in this world I am ever gonna change the way I look, the way I feel, the way I think and the way I was raised for that sort of intimidation. I am me, and I will always be me.

So, with my possitive attitude I got out of the waiting room while I left behind a small crowd of discriminating officers who doubted me from the first time they looked at me, and had nothing to blame me for (I think that made them a bit angry... for the waste of time). I just payed the airline the penalty for changing flights, and got to Puerto Rico with no problem afterwards.

You should be proud always of what you are, what you've grown to, what you KNOW! Knowledge is and will always be power, and the more you know, the better judgement of the world you will have. The world will always have discrimination, but as long as you don't have any of yourself towards others, the world will always be free for you to roam and discover.