Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rv-de 2066 days ago
> As cynical as I am

okay ... are you ready?

> She doesn’t understand racism

give her and her friends blue t-shirts and an equal number of other kids red t-shirts. do this for several weeks. lo and behold the basis of racism unfold.

racism is an inherent human feature which can only be overcome by education. something adults have to provide for children.

3 comments

This is a ridiculous claim disproven daily by thousands of daycares practicing color-coded stable groups.
Last time I checked children bully each other over their clothes and form sub-groups based on them.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3513287/

It likely also depends on how prominent the color coding is. Just a marker would probably be too abstract for children to be factored in. But I'd question your claim if children are clad differently in an obvious fashion like different shirt colors f.x.

The programs I have knowledge of use bandannas.

The study you posted does not describe children bullying or forming subgroups based on wearing a color shirt.

No, racism is not an inherent human feature. A claim like that needs better justification than ... none at all.
Humans don't seem to require much in the way of a push before racist tendencies emerge:

https://exploringyourmind.com/blue-eyes-and-brown-eyes-the-j...

Suspect there’s more going on there than the naive explanation. Repeatability breaks down quite easily:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2009/oct/18/racism-psych...

Racism is a lazy mental short cut. It reminds me of Robert Cialdini’s research.
ingroup and outgroup is an inherent feature of ALL social animals.
ingroup/outgroup behavior ≠ racism
racism is just a subgroup that is a type of ingroup/outgroup behavior.
Spoken French is just a subgroup that is a type of communication behaviour, which is an inherent feature of all social animals.

Doesn't mean speaking French is innate or inherent.

Nor does it mean that antisemitism, white supremacism, apartheid or nazism are anything but dialects of the same age-old social pattern.
Where do you think it comes from? Elephants? Of course it's an inherent human feature.
Christmas isn't an inherent human feature.
No, but marking significant events and anniversaries seems to be. Speaking English isn't inherent, but speaking is. The specific kind of racism you're thinking about probably isn't, but people preferring and trusting people more like themselves is.
The argument that less advanced societies are more racist or acceptive of racism, strongly supports the claim you are dismissing.
I'm glad someone has all of the answers.