Quote:

Initially, bigotry is taught. Put children together, they will play, regardless of color, or even language. Teach them to hate, they will hate. These people had bad parenting.

The problem is, many people on this board are still young and impressionable. Threads like this one are teaching them to hate.

When one matures, if they are any way intelligent, they abandon this hatred after seeing how the world really is, or after doing a little bit of reasoning. And if one is intelligent, they will not take up something so obviously wrong, and think it is "cool".

The adult bigot is also insecure, seeking acceptance from others by denigrating different classes of people.


-Chuck, Vegetarian fanboy



Actually, this is completely untrue. Tolerance is taught. Prejudice is inherent in our nature. There were several landmark studies done in the post WWII era that were replicated (and documented on film) in the 1960's. Children are very sensitive to taking direction from adults about which groups to dislike BUT even if those cues are absent from adults, they will discriminate on their own. In one legendary child psychology experiment, it was impossible to eliminate discrimination no matter how homogeneous the groups were. The children would pick up on obvious things first (hair color, sex, etc) then when all of these things were controlled for and all of the children were the same age, race, hair color, sex, etc., they began to discriminate based on more subtle things like weight, or clothing. Yes there are common, frequent examples of very different children who accept one another, but I don't feel like writing a textbook, so I'll skip why that happens (i.e. what other interpersonal cues supersede race or sex).

Racism is wrong on philosophical, moral, and ethical grounds--NOT because it isn't inherent in our nature. It is a lot like learning to use a toilet. A child that is too young does not have an advanced enough nervous system to control their bowels, so they cannot be toilet trained until a certain age. A child must have BOTH the physical capacity (maturity) and the training to stop shitting in their pants. Racism is a lot like shitting in your pants. A person needs to have the intellectual capacity and the training (even if it is very subtle training) to understand and internalize that racism is wrong and why.
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--Some of us look for The Way in opium and some in God, some of us in whiskey and some in love. It is all the same Way and it leads nowhither.