Is discrimination biological, or is it psychological? Nature or Nurture

[NoMasters]

Well recently I posted something offensive that I regret and now I think a discussion should be opened on how discrimination comes to be.

I grew up in an extremely anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-muslim, anti-liberal, and I think you could guess the rest.

While growing up I had a conflict with a student in high school who called me a terrorist because I was a Muslim at the time(Atheist now). He ended up calling me a terrorist for over a month in gym, and I ended up beating the ever living shit out of him from rage being built up.

I then got suspended for 5 days and he got nothing for calling me a terrorist. We sued the school and ended getting the entire district administration fired. But that is irrelevant.

Now I ask, are the people that I grew up with innately racist because their families have been for several decades? Or were they brought up that way without any way of really stopping it.

I find myself to be a bit discriminative when past events were committed by another nationality. I.e. my post about Serbian slavs which was completely out of line.

I never grew up with the resentment towards the Serbian race because of hundreds of years of violence between us (Albanians) and them.

Many of my family members died in that long struggle and when I see something that looks offensive to me about that conflict in anyway, I get extremely offended and defensive.

Now I ask, is that a biological reaction because of my surroundings? Or is it purely that I can't separate reason from emotion?

And also try to discuss the hatred of minorities in the South.

[Ostrinski]

Nah you're just a run of the mill chauvinist.

Do you realize that you just asked if racism is biological? Please think before you post for christ's sake.

[NoMasters]

Nah you're just a run of the mill chauvinist.

Do you realize that you just asked if racism is biological? Please think before you post for christ's sake.

Yes I think there is an argument for biology playing a big part in it.

Are you telling me that ethnocentrism isn't innate?

I think there is biological reasons for racism, although it may not be as clear cut as your black, im white, I hate you.

I asked. I am not saying it is or it isn't, I am just wondering what you guys think. And not fully biological, but part biological and part nurture and etc..

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Racism is an expression of a narrow, prejudiced world-view. It is learned.

[NoMasters]

I agree mostly with that statement man.

[Ostrinski]

*Sigh* Let's whip this dead horse. Its a social construct that developed alongside the interests of those benefited from it. Do we really need to list all the times in human history that races co-existed? Anyone saying that there are biological factors in something like this is 1) Making a baseless assertion absent of any acceptable premise or proof and 2) Probably just trying to apologize for racists.

[Le Rouge]

I have a dog, and treat him like a human...no discrimination here, even between different races. :)

[NoMasters]

I have a dog, and treat him like a human...no discrimination here, even between different races. :)

Hahaha.

Well I am guessing no one is going for a mix of biology and nurture.

[#FF0000]

Hahaha.

Well I am guessing no one is going for a mix of biology and nurture.

Biology always plays a subtle role in things but honestly when it comes to anything beyond eating and shitting it is almost always largely due to nurture. Things like "instincts" don't really play much of a role in human behavior.

I mean of course there's that "in-group vs. out-group" mentality but who makes up each group and why is a learned thing.

Also race doesn't biologically exist unless you think there are hundreds of thousands of races.

[Kenco Smooth]

Probably just trying to apologize for racists.

How does identifying a biological influence on behavior justify that behavior in any way?

[ed miliband]

How does identifying a biological influence on behavior justify that behavior in any way?

if something is an innate human characteristic how can it be condemned?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Now I ask, are the people that I grew up with innately racist because their families have been for several decades? Or were they brought up that way without any way of really stopping it.

I find myself to be a bit discriminative when past events were committed by another nationality. I.e. my post about Serbian slavs which was completely out of line.

I never grew up with the resentment towards the Serbian race because of hundreds of years of violence between us (Albanians) and them.

Many of my family members died in that long struggle and when I see something that looks offensive to me about that conflict in anyway, I get extremely offended and defensive.

Now I ask, is that a biological reaction because of my surroundings? Or is it purely that I can't separate reason from emotion?

And also try to discuss the hatred of minorities in the South.

In this specific case, what caused these views was 25 years of propaganda following the Iranian Revolution. If you just look at images of Arabs and Muslims in the US media there is a distinct change from the 1970s on. People in the middle east were shown as exotic and the archetypes were of either anachronistic "primitive people" or cultured North Africans. Islam was "mysterious" or "quaint" but not threatening. This began to change as the US's relationships in the middle east changed and especially after the Iranian Revolution where the "bad" Arabs were not nationalist "thugs" but "Islamic radicals". With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this propaganda went into war-time demonetization mode and at this point anti-Islamic sentiment is practically the only justification for occupations that the US still has - hence the anti-park 51 protests and all the laws to pre-empt a take-over by sharia law. Of course once this hatred is allowed and tacitly or explicitly encouraged, it doesn't matter if you are Muslim from Serbia or South East Asia or if you are non-arab or non-muslim but have darker skin and a dark curly beard as is the case of a hipster friend of mine who is jewish but anti-arab bigots I guess assume that beards are a genetic trait of arabs only.:rolleyes:

So, yeah, it's environment, not biology.

Racial attitudes have changed a great deal over time and while all class societies encourage prejudices and all ruling classes use scapegoats and try and divide and rule the population, it isn't always racial in nature, in fact race is more of a recent concept. There were anti-jewish laws and pogroms in feudal Europe, but if someone converted, then they were no longer targeted (or at least their children weren't - it was different in various places and time periods to my understanding). Modern racial hatred of jews (antisemitism) is much more recent and for neo-nazis, it doesn't matter if your grandfather had converted to Christianity, you'd still be considered Jewish if that was your "blood". In feudal times, things were unequal by design according to their ideologies... peasants were peasants because God decided to make them peasants. So racial discrimination wasn't necessary or really part of the feudal system unless it was part of a xenephobic war drive or something. But in capitalism where anyone can be anything supposedly, ruling classes needed other ways to repress people and explain inequality. So they blame the poor themselves for inequality. Irish weren't poor because they were forced to do all the shit-work for little pay in the 1870s, it was because they were an "inferior race". In early slavery there was little official difference for African slaves and European forced servants: they did the same work together and stayed in the same quarters. Racism in the US south developed to justify why some people had to be permanent servants with less rights than everyone else despite the supposed "universal liberty" ethos of the American Revolution. So they had to actually create laws that made even poor whites superior in status to black slaves, they banned inter-racial marriage (implying that there had been inter-racial marriages in the first place) and social mixing. This was a win-win for the Southern ruling class that now had a way to unite poor whites with rich white slave-owners while also making both rebellions of slaves and of poor farmers weaker and less effective than earlier rebellions of both races.

[#FF0000]

How does identifying a biological influence on behavior justify that behavior in any way?

Because natural = good is a common fallacy.

[Red Noob]

Nurtured from capitalism.

/thread

[Chrisstanford]

Well recently I posted something offensive that I regret and now I think a discussion should be opened on how discrimination comes to be.

I grew up in an extremely anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-muslim, anti-liberal, and I think you could guess the rest.

While growing up I had a conflict with a student in high school who called me a terrorist because I was a Muslim at the time(Atheist now). He ended up calling me a terrorist for over a month in gym, and I ended up beating the ever living shit out of him from rage being built up.

I then got suspended for 5 days and he got nothing for calling me a terrorist. We sued the school and ended getting the entire district administration fired. But that is irrelevant.

Now I ask, are the people that I grew up with innately racist because their families have been for several decades? Or were they brought up that way without any way of really stopping it.

I find myself to be a bit discriminative when past events were committed by another nationality. I.e. my post about Serbian slavs which was completely out of line.

I never grew up with the resentment towards the Serbian race because of hundreds of years of violence between us (Albanians) and them.

Many of my family members died in that long struggle and when I see something that looks offensive to me about that conflict in anyway, I get extremely offended and defensive.

Now I ask, is that a biological reaction because of my surroundings? Or is it purely that I can't separate reason from emotion?

And also try to discuss the hatred of minorities in the South.

There is a genetic basis for "fear of different" that may have helped the species survive a longgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg time ago. It has absolutely no place anymore. There is also a basis for believe "our people" are superior.(our people being either racial or cultural or religious although it is usually a mixture). Again this has no place in society. There is also a genetic basis for having sex with 13 yo's, this also may have helped the species survive when lifespans were shorter. Civilization is about putting the primal behind us and finding out what our potential is.

[cyu]

http://www.psypost.org/2015/01/bilingualism-changes-childrens-beliefs-world-around-30786

Most young children are essentialists: They believe that human and animal characteristics are innate.

bilingualism in the preschool years can alter children’s beliefs about the world around them. Contrary to their unilingual peers, many kids who have been exposed to a second language after age three believe that an individual’s traits arise from experience.

Sequential bilinguals did, in fact, show reduced essentialist beliefs about language — they knew that a baby raised by Italians would speak Italian. But they were also significantly more likely to believe that an animal’s physical traits and vocalizations are learned through experience — that a duck raised by dogs would bark and run rather than quack and fly.

each group made different kinds of mistakes. Monolinguals were more likely to think that everything is innate, while bilinguals were more likely to think that everything is learned.

everyday experience in one domain — language learning — can alter children’s beliefs about a wide range of domains, reducing children’s essentialist biases.

adults who hold stronger essentialist beliefs are more likely to endorse stereotypes and prejudiced attitudes.

Our finding that bilingualism reduces essentialist beliefs raises the possibility that early second language education could be used to promote the acceptance of human social and physical diversity.

[Rosa Partizan]

As someone who grew up bilingual, I know there are lots of benefits from it, but I am really surprised about this. Is there any kind of assumption where this result might stem from?