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