I am unable to figure out this racism thing.?

Question

Maybe we are naturally tribealistic and would rather stick to our own.

Answer 1

You could be right.

Answer 2

That is the truth. However, we are constantly told that we must deny our own feelings, and that the natural desire to distrust people of another race / tribe is wrong, and that we must embrace them.

I fail to see why it is like that, especially when we are told that certain minorities' natrual desires must be respected and embraced (eg homosexuality), yet at the same time we are told that other people's natural desires should be shunned (eg xenophobia).

It's just another example of the injustice that is being done to majorities all over the politically-correct world.

Answer 3

yes it could be tribal, in that we like to be with people we recognise as like our selves, but it's the hatred bit I don't understand, I think that if someone is racist in that they hate and or despise people who are a different nationality or colour, there must be something psychologically wrong going on with the. On the other hand there are some people who are racist out of fear based on ignorance, they can generally be educated out of it.

Answer 4

Yes we are. If was not race then it woulod be something else. In fact we draw lines based upon income and sexuality as readily as we do race.

It is just part of human nature.

Answer 5

It has nothing to do with race.
Its bassically an excuse for brain dead thugs to beat somebody up. the same goes for religeon, football etc.

Answer 6

yeah ---maybe we are...that's the only reason that I can think of as well. I can't figure it out either..It makes absolutely no sense to me..I guess I wasn't brought up to think that way.

Answer 7

Yes I think you are right. Let's all don our tribealistic warpaint and stand up and be counted in a friendly way.

Answer 8

I don't understand football hooligans, but I think it's part of the same problem.

Answer 9

Tribealistic is one thing, hating other or wanting to do harm to other because they are 'not like us' is different and wrong.

Answer 10

There is no relation between racism and tribalism - except that they are both social constructions. I presume by tribalism you mean a desire to live in endogamous groups, making war on groups who speak different languages or have different customs. This is only "human nature" insofar as Western historians construct it, from Herodotus on.

In fact, Herodotus identifies this belief in "tribes" as exactly a construction based on a desire for land and other chattels (such as marriageable women). No group can exist endogamously (only marrying within the tribe) as this leads to genetic disorders, so you could say it's "human nature" to look outside the tribe for 'fresh blood.'

So that's tribalism - a myth constructed in an era of city states to support the military. It is revived by early anthropologists who want to see non-European cultures as existing at an earlier stage of historical development (another myth based on beliefs about Eurowestern culture and its supposed superiority). In fact, so-called tribes in Africa and the Americas were nation-states every bit as much as European ones, with governments, bureaucracies and diplomats. There were wars, just as there were in Europe, over land rights and perceived political slights.

This construction of non-white peoples as being not only different but 'backwards' or 'primitive' brings me to your framing argument: what is racism? Well, it does relate to notions of tribalism, but is not the same thing. Racism is the social construction of a hierarchy of beings, with white people at the top, and other cultures and peoples measured in relation to their achievement of white people's standards (which are culturally arbitrary, and cannot be said to be ethically 'best' or indeed achieved - for example, democracy and women's rights are only partially accomplished in Western nations, and yet Western leaders regularly criticise other countries without setting their own houses in order).

Racism depends on the idea that such a thing as race exists. Tribes, at the very least, conform to a degree of self-identification by the group in question - ie: the Cherokee understood and understand themselves as Cherokee, and therefore different from Sioux or Lenape or Chickasaw people. Race is an imposition from outside, based on some dodgy pseudo-science that's about as contemporary and reliable as mesmerism or exorcisms. Yet racism persists - why?

Because it is advantageous to white people - who have, since the beginning of racist social Darwinism - tried to identify themselves as a "tribe," regardless of the fact that this is an ever-shifting designation that contracts to mean "British" or "American" when opposed to, say, French or Italian people, and expands to mean "all non-Muslims" or "all non-blacks," as occasion demands. Like the facetious use of "tribes" to designate groups in high schools, this misnomer gives rise to a defense of racism based on cod-anthropology that defines people by something as loose and woolly as their 'customs.'

In short: racism means that you think you are better than everyone else. Tribalism means that you think 'your own' are the people with most power at any one time. Neither are verifiable and both are destructive. They are myths, and believing in them indicates a lack of willingness to think. There is no "natural" when it comes to defining human behaviour, and certainly none when it comes to mass human opinion, created and maintained by dominant structures such as religion, education and the media.

No-one is an island. There's a very interesting show on Channel 4 in the UK this week which uses genetic testing to discover just how "British" some white British people who hold racist views actually are: one woman, who runs a society to have white people recognised as an ethnic minority, is actually genetically Roma (gypsy); a racist journalist discovers that he has none-too-distant African ancestors, and so on. If race matters, then racism is impossible, because we are all the product of people of many "races."

On the other hand, racists are unpleasant, with a primitive belief structure and uncivilised customs and behaviour. They should be profiled, identified, documented and restrained. They should be confined in a tribal reserve, not allowed to marry out, and cared for paternalistically by a government that understands their needs better than they do. Perhaps they could be used for medical testing?

These circumstances - including the Tunguskee experiment in which hundreds of African American men were infected with and allowed to die of syphilis - are the product of institutionalised, systemic racism. How do you like it?

Answer 11

birds of a feather flock together