Joanne --

Racism is too universal, across time, culture, and geography to be  
only a learned trait.  Reinforced by culture, and self-perpetuating  
to be sure, but not only that.  There are deeper factors in play. I  
know very few psychologists, and only a few anthropologists who even  
think in these terms — the enduring effects of multiple-hominoid  
competition. Yet I think the case can be made that this must be  
considered a powerful force. If national character can be formed on a  
scale of hundreds of years, imagine the effects of a scale covering  
centuries of millennia.  If, to the contrary, you know of such a  
literature  I would be very interested in having you steer me in that  
direction.

My point is that there is a leverage point, a default setting, as it  
were, to fear and hate the other, whether the other is Irish,  
Chinese, Catholic, African or whatever. There are many reasons  
Africans were enslaved, not least their genetic resistance to  
malaria, but that is just a particular cultural manifestation of a  
deeper impulse.  Just as the fear of African sexuality, at its  
deepest point, was the harmonic of the fear Cro Magnon and  
Neanderthal felt about cross-breeding. Yet, during the 10,000 years  
of competitive habitation, it did happen. [See  Erik Trinkaus's, of  
Washington University, paper  in Proceedings of the National Academy  
of Sciences, 15 Jan2007.] Individual choice always trumps impulse.   
Isn't that great, and reassuring to know? Which is why, regardless of  
political arguments, I am proud of the fact that America in my life  
time has changed for the better.  No one seems to mention it but if  
not an absolute majority, at least a sizeable minority of the iconic  
figures in our culture today are of African descent: Colin Powell,  
Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Wood, Michael Jordan, Condelezza Rice, and on  
and on.  Perhaps because I have so many criticisms of our current  
culture, I particularly value the things that are working.

-- Stephan



On 30 Jun 2007, at 17:48, qvarizona wrote

> An interesting subject, Stephan, and while I agree that fear is at  
> the root of some of today's racism --after all, it's what the  
> psychologists have been telling us for years-- I'm not so sure it  
> had much of a part in the racism practiced against  blacks in the  
> south or Jews in NYC and Irish in Boston,  or for that matter, the  
> relatively small amount  of racism displayed when I was growing up  
> in the central (inner-city)  district of Seattle during and shortly  
> after WW II.
>
> I also agree with most psychologists and anthropologists who   
> suggest that any fear seen in racism is a learned trait, and not   
> hard-wired into our physiology.
>
> Joanne
>
>
> "Stephan A. Schwartz" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 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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