Fear of the other, which is what racism is at its core, appears to be
hard wired into our physiology, and I think this is a very important
consideration that unfortunately almost always goes unmentioned in
discussions such as this one. Although it can be overcome, and has
been as the improvement in race relations in the U.S. makes clear,
this is volitional — an act of will. The aggregate of thousands upons
thousands of individual choices collectively expressing cultural/
social will. The revulsion we feel today about slave owning is
something that only those multiple individual choices made possible.
It helps me, and perhaps it will help others on this list, to realize
that for approximately 200,000 years or, roughly, 40 times longer
that the historical record there were multiple hominoid species
(humans, their fossil ancestors, and the great apes all belong to
the superfamily Hominoidea) in competition on the earth, the best
known of which were the Neanderthals and Cro Magnons, although the
evidence suggests there were other "archaic" hominoids in competition
as well. They collectively roamed through the Middle Paleolithic
together until around 35,000 B.P., when Homo Sapien -- us -- finally
emerged. Fearing the other, for those many millennia obviously had
evolutionary survival implications. Those who made fast decisions on
the basis of appearance tended to survive, and their gene pool
continued. Those who didn't died, as did their genetic line. I take
considerable comfort in the fact that in my lifetime alone the
dominant American view on race and gender has radically changed, and
that this change has been for the better.
-- Stephan
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