So I've been wondering where racism comes from and started thinking back to when I was a kid and how I looked at others who looked differently. I recall as a young kid whenever Cosby came on tv we had to change the channel, even though he never said anything bad? But if it was the Waltons or Three's Company then it was Ok. Later going to school all my teachers were white. I recall on the first day of school in Elementary we had one black girl in the class. We were all assigned seats and the black girl was assigned her own seat away from the rest of us in the back of the room. Was that racism? ya! Did anyone object? No. I didn't question it. Later in middle school I saw how rough certain groups of kids of certain races were. No manners, or respect at all. I got roughed up a couple of times, and perhaps didn't quite get over that, I certainly never forgot.

They say that infants are more attracted to beautiful faces and don't like to look at ugly ones. There seems to be some instinct there? On the other hand perhaps the major influence is a loathing of poverty, and disregard for manners-- sort of a displacement for what Americans really hate and that is lawlessness, and being broke?

Any thoughts?

I think fear of spiders is instinct.

I think that finding fault with humans because of cosmetic considerations is learned. But I'm not very bright. So maybe I don't have the brains to recognize nature's signals?

I think it is learned. I well remember Friday night boxing on television in the 1950's. I went with my dad to my uncles where eight to ten of us watched the matches. The main match always featured a white guy in black trunks against a black guy in white trunks. The black guy NEVER won on points. He only won when he scored a decisive knockout which almost never happened.

My uncles throughout the match would constantly say things against the "n****r" and would only berate the white guy for hitting him in the head. They really believed that "n****rs" had thicker skulls and smaller brains and as a result couldn't feel anything.

Probably a bit of both.
Out-group fear seems likely to be instinctual, at least largely. And it can have survival value.

What overcomes that instinct, though, is expanding who is in your in-group. Making your family bigger. Expanding your tribe to include neighboring tribes. Including neighbors not exactly like you in your group. All of which help overcome the instinct by letting you learn that these other people have more in common with you, and share most of the same motivations that drive you, than you originally thought.

Modern people who persist in prejudice and racism refuse to expand their in-group. So they're stuck with the instinct -- which is often shown approval by the same in-group they refuse to expand. And so it goes on.

Agreed. There is little chance that any specific action is fully learned.

Think of our genetic tendency to group together for safety. It leads us to gravitate towards learned groups. I was Mormon because my parents were. I was Republican for the same reason. I like football because I grew up watching the Cowboys and Longhorns every week. And sadly I discriminated because of what my Mom taught me about those dirty nasty people. It wasn't instinct that put me in all those groups. It was instinct that told me I needed a group.

Part of being human is that we also have the genetic gift to grow. We have a seemingly unique ability to reject both instinct and learned behavior. We can be something different if we choose.

Truthfully I wouldn't routinely reject instinct, but I would question learned behavior as a course of habit. It's just kind of hard to know the difference.

jacob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It wasn't instinct
> that put me in all those groups. It was instinct
> that told me I needed a group.

Very nicely phrased :)

Learned no doubt. When I consider instinct, though, my thought is that perhaps as humans at some point it is our nature to have a need to find reasons to consider ourselves superior. We begin to rate ourselves not only in relation to skin color, but facial features, height, weight, talent, athleticism, intelligence, etc.

Does the need to define ourselves as individuals also feed the need to stand out? To be superior? A way to boost our own self esteem?

Using talent and skill and cleverness as a way to stand out seems somewhat healthy. Using skin color as a way to feel superior or better about ourselves is for underachievers propelling themselves toward bigotry.

Racism is the lazy man's way to feel special?

I don't know. That's just what occurred to me.

I used to make mormons sqirm each week.

I often dated the Lamanite girls that attended our school.

My grandmother asked why I like darkies.

I told her they were Lamanites and reminded her Brigham Young himself commanded her grandfather to marry two.

After I married one my new ward was real standoffish. Then when they learned she was Lamanite they warmed up to her.

Then of course the early 70s was a transition time.

Visual images, the first emerging tactile feelings of nurture
May be connected with survival.

Those feelings and sights and sounds may instinctively create a sense of memory of survival, called "safety" or possibly tribe? Or ? Family or may be pets like puppies, dogs, or horses they can be included in this " tribe"/
Which is a visceral tactile visual auditory labeling of what is an extension of oneself.

Maybe mixed visual images are paradoxical ethnically just making you notice "not / you" and actual positive encounters young enough to be included in a sense of community, tribe, are needed to not have a strong sense of "other" triggered when seeing a difference.

For instance I saw brown and fair skinned Mormons and not Mormons eat together at family dinners all my young life, and it was normal to me, it normalized it, as a tribal norm. Their wards and their community was fairly saturated with blond brown black hair, blue and brown eyes, fair and olive and brown skin, so it seemed a norm. It was only later meeting less integrated grouping when I became aware of how unique and a avant guard daring they were gathering their family members into a mixed ethnic and mixed religion tribe. They were rebels beneath the skin, and I admire them.

Based on my experience as both a teacher and as a parent, I'm sure prejudice is learned.

I think how/when/to what degree it is learned is very complicated, though. There are so many contributing factors for anything a child or adult learns, or how they choose to apply what they've learned.

It's my understanding that all behavior is learned. Children

learn what they live.

saucie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's my understanding that all behavior is
> learned. Children
>
> learn what they live.

I'm with saucie on this one.

mr, anonymous: You said "fast way forward to the present" but you didn't state what age he is now when he said "because I hate them", referring to black contestants on family feud.


This would have indicated to me that he is ready for, and greatly in need of, a serious discussion regarding his aversion to black people. At the very least, coming from a child(assuming he is still a child), I would be more than curious, as a parent, to try to understand why he might have such an extreme feeling of dislike, loathing, hostility toward blacks. This most definitely presents a 'teaching moment'.

mr, anonymous: You said "fast way forward to the present" but you didn't state what age he is now when he said "because I hate them", referring to black contestants on family feud.


This would have indicated to me that he is ready for, and desperately in need of, a serious discussion regarding his aversion to black people. At the very least, coming from a child(assuming he is still a child), I would be more than curious, as a parent, to try to understand why he might have such an extreme feeling of dislike, loathing, hostility toward blacks. This most definitely presents a 'teaching moment'.

We do, after all, have a giant brain in our tiny heads that is capable of cognitive processes. We are NOT chickens and can reason on a much higher level.

That said, we do have some ingroup-outgroup biases that can come naturally to us, most likely from our evolutionary instincts, but again, we also developed those big beautiful brains that can reason whether or not someone is a threat. So like with most human conditions, it's mostly nurture, some of it is nature.

Children say they hate things because they picked it up somewhere. It's true that a child is not mature enough to understand exactly what he or she is stating, because to them hating a black person is on the same level as hating, IDK, broccoli, let's say.

IDKW so many people have a difficult time talking about tough issues with their kids. It strikes me as bizarre and kinda lazy to NOT make sure your kid has an understanding of why people are different, but still the same. I work with roughly about 200 kids and they ask me a lot of tough questions and I don't shy away from most of them; Obviously some are not appropriate to answer and I gently explain that.

It has to be carefully taught...

https://youtu.be/HnY-Ft7F9eo

My parents took me to see that movie when I was maybe 10 or 11. I couldn't understand why "Nurse Nellie" was so shocked that Emile DeBecque had children from his former marriage to a Polynesian woman. My father had to explain it to me.

I didn't understand - still don't, really. I thought the Polynesian children were adorable.

My DH had never seen "South Pacific." One time, when one of our kids was very small, and sick, I held her and walked the floors, singing songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein (that's what we learned in my family - not Mother Goose), and I happened to sing the "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" song. DH found it very touching. I still have the old vinyl recording of it, and have ordered the DVD version. I'm looking forward to sharing it with DH.

I found myself singing along with John Kerr during the clip that you posted. Thank you for the memories!

I try not to be racist. Prejudice is something else. But get a group of dark chickens and put one white one in the coop. The dark chickens will harass the white one killing it. So some of it has to be instinct, yes? We hopefully are evolved enough to get beyond this.

Chicks just hatched put together and raised together since they got out of the shell?

And not adult chickens put in another chickens pen together?

I think a little bit of both.

I was raised on bigotry but it never felt right. I just accepted that I was more valiant in the pre-existence, so I shouldn't feel sorry for the people cursed with the dark skin.

Of course, I have none of those prejudices now, but I think there is such an instinctual rampant misunderstanding of white privilege by all of us who take advantage of it.

I don't know how to say it without violating the rule against politics, but when you really want to go back to a time and place where the world and our country was, what you assume was, great, that is bigotry and your acknowledgment of your white privilege. Because the country was not great at that time (I guess they mean the 50s era) for people of color. Still isn't, but we have come a long way as a country. I hope we keep progressing and don't regress. But it will take a lot of acknowledgment of reality by white people in order to do that. And acknowledgment of reality does not come easy for a hellofalot of people. And we have to figure out how to overcome both our learned and instinctual prejudices.

prejudice must be carefully taught.

Awareness of danger is not pre-judging

"you must be taught before it's too late
before you are six or seven or eight
to hate all the people your relatives hate
you've got to be carefully taught
"
Quote from the musical "South Pacific"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2016 01:04PM by desertman.

As early as kindergarten I was hitting the black kids on the head. Was I taught about racism ? No. Did my family ever say a word about them ? No. We had black neighbors my family got along with and yet, since early childhood they bothered me. Fast forward to me having my own children, ever since my oldest was 2 1/2 he has disliked them. If a black child sat next to him, he would get up and move. If a black child tried to play, he would walk away.. If a black child merely walked by he was on the attack, and yet I never said anything to him about race or color. Fast way forward to the present, and he is angry when the black people win on family feud. I asked why and he responds with " because I hate them " and nothing more.
Sometimes, people just don't like other people. I wouldn't consider he or I racist, he is still young and just doesn't like them, and I couldn't care less about skin color.

mr. annonymous Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> " because I hate them "

> I
> wouldn't consider he or I racist...

He hates black people, for no reason, yet you don't consider him racist?

Really?

I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine that most of the rest of RfM will resist your interpretation of your data.

I think it's easy to imagine that if you were there to see him interact with Black children, that his reactions were in response to what he saw YOU expressing, non-verbally. I doubt that a complete denial by you of this possibility would find much support.

Could we be wrong? Sure, but since it's a matter, at this point, of belief over evidence, I don't we are we'd change our opinions, just as we wouldn't expect you to change yours.

I can see why you posted as annon.

The thing about perspective is that you have to work for it. It sounds to me like you haven't put much effort into gaining perspective.

Okay, so your son would not talk to black people, play with black people.

He would get angry when a black family won Family Feud because "he hates them"? People he does not know?

And you would not consider him to be racist.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense...

From reading and thinking carefully over each post (and they were excellent posts as always) it looks like about 1/2 feel that there is instinct involved to a large extent. The other 1/2 feel it's all learned.

There is something intriguing about Mr. Anonomous's child at such a young age of two obviously disliking this group. Depending on intelligence he may have picked up on adult conversations and has good comprehension skills. Not all kids get what adults are talking about. What should be explained to the child is that we have our personal feelings but have to show "manners" in public. But at two, children are so selfish, that getting them to understand civility is a battle.

Well if thats how you feel Mr anonymous, you'll never be invited to one of my parties. I'm sure you won't mind anyway since I have friends of all nationalities and races. You won't be missed.

The thing is, I have no issues with race. My last girlfriend was black, the one before that Hispanic, the one before that white. My child has been around all types ( he is a mix himself by the way of 2 non white ethnicities/races )
We never talk about race, why would we ? He's still a child and It's not something to bring up.
I am just saying that despite my up bringing with friendly black neighbors and my mother's friendly black friends I didn't like the ones in school and although my child is a mix, and I have introduced him to many of my black, Hispanic , Asian acquaintances, he just doesn't like the black ones. ( with the exception of course of my black ex girlfriend who he really liked )
Given that I have slept with different colors of our human rainbow,and made a child that is mixed that I adore more than anyone on this planet I would say again that I am not racist, and some people just have preferences.

With plenty of misconceptions about what race is and isn't and misguided, negative perceptions of PoC. Everybody, including racists, think they're not racist, but the reality is, most people have internal biases they themselves are not aware of, as it's just an ingrained reaction.

A good amount of people express "well-intentioned" racism to PoC so often, they don't even realize what they said was tacky and rude. When a PoC calls them on it, they're truly shocked that what they said, was indeed, bigoted and unnecessary.

I strongly recommend everyone reads Nutureshock, if only for the section on discussing race with children. Nothing should be off topic (in an age appropriate manner) when educating your children.

We are all prejudice.

It's just some like to point it out more in others...