[JuniorBalleg]

>Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism.

It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired.

Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the world with their alien appearances, behaviours, and even smells! Who knows how the reptilian subconscious analyses this information - are we at war? conquered? lost? isolated? kidnapped?

In a more modern sense, we can more readily let out guard down among our own, knowing we share a common history, culture, humour, etc, while we must precariously navigate the invisible minefield of sensitivities in a more diverse group.

[ModernMech]

I don't find this to be true in my experience. Pretty much any moderately-sized university campus in America is a counterpoint to what you're saying. These communities can be very diverse, and while it's true that you can often find various cliques that split along various demographic lines, members of diverse university communities still live, learn, and work in close proximity.

I think implicit in your comment is the assumption that people with different backgrounds are somehow defacto strangers. But what makes it all work on a university campus, imo, is that everyone has a purpose; there are no scary strangers because everyone's motivations are well-understood, since everyone on campus has a job to do. No one is really a stranger.

It doesn't matter if you are of a different color or gender, or that you come from a place I've never been to, or that you speak a language I've never heard, or that you eat food I've never tasted. My lizard brain doesn't kick in when I interact with you because you are just here to study and learn, or to help in that process.

As an example, I am a professor and I have a new colleague. He is from the other side of the world, he was born a decade before me, he eats food different from mine, he worships a different God than I do. But we get along just fine, and that's because despite all those differences, we still have more in common than not. And even if we didn't, we still have to rely on one another and work as a team to achieve a common goal.

[erosenbe0]

Correct. It's mostly social and not based on 'looks,' per se. Let's give an example. I'm white as a ghost. But from pre-school age I went over to my Indian neighbor's house to play. I'm fond of the cooking and the accent of Indian-born English speakers is totally normal for me, probably more normal than a Southern accent.

Now if I go to India to do some work I will seek out some other Americans to befriend while there, perhaps naturally looking for people like me. But by this I mean other Americans whether Indian-American or otherwise -- I don't mean whites who literally look like me. Get it?

[komali2]

> It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired.

Is it? I reject this wholesale. Do you have evidence?

If you do, why have you set definitions of "otherness" at skin color? I feel quite comfortably "among my own" alongside basically any human, because they're humans just like me. Don't you?

[erosenbe0]

You are only confirming that nominally, ethnicity and race are not important.

For example, a white American of Slavic descent is more comfortable in a room of non-white Americans who also smell of Budweiser than they would be in a room of Russians in Russia speaking Russian and smelling of vodka. Get it?