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