Although research reveals infants demonstrate a preference for caregivers of their own race, any future racial biases generally are environmentally acquired.

One way of rectifying this bias is by allowing young children to become accustomed to other races in a harmoniously positive manner.

Adult racist sentiments, however, are often cemented by a misguided yet strong sense of entitlement, perhaps also acquired from rearing.

Fortunately, at a very young age I was emphatically told by my mother about the exceptionally kind and caring nature of our black family doctor.

She never had anything disdainful to say about people of color; in fact she loves to watch/listen to the Middle Eastern and Indian subcontinental dancers and musicians on the multicultural channels.

Conversely, if she’d told me the opposite about the doctor, I could’ve aged while blindly linking his color with an unjustly cynical view of him and all black people.

When angry, my (late) father occasionally expressed displeasure with Anglo immigrants, largely due to his own experiences with bigotry as a new Canadian citizen in the 1950s and ’60s.

He, who like Mom emigrated from Eastern Europe, didn’t resent non-white immigrants, for he realized they had things at least as bad. Plus he noticed—as I also now do—in them an admirable absence of a sense of entitlement.

Thus essentially by chance I reached adulthood unstricken by uncontrolled feelings of racial contempt seeking expression.

Not as lucky, some people—who may now be in an armed authority capacity—were raised with a distrust or blind dislike of other racial groups.

Regardless, the first step towards changing our irrationally biased thinking is our awareness of it and its origin.

But until then, ugly sentiments must be either suppressed or professionally dealt with, especially when considering the mentality is easily inflamed by anger.

Can't it be both transmitted AND innate? For instance, theoretically, some white person could become a racist by reading about black crime, black dysfunction, et cetera, and the reason that they would get this reaction from reading about these things would likely be due to their genes (or, alternatively, some other element of their biology). But if the situation in regards to blacks would have been significantly different--think Wakanda, for instance, but over here in the US--then such a person would have the same genes but would still have a very different experience with blacks and thus a very different reaction to blacks and very different views about blacks than they would have actually had in real life.

Does that make sense?

Although research reveals infants demonstrate a preference for caregivers of their own race — FrankGSterleJr

1. But is this already evidence of racism being innate?*
2. How do they even conduct such studies, given that experiments with infants can quickly become ethically prohibitive?


*Infants also show a preference for caregivers of the same language. Do you know of a study that contrasted the infants' preference for caregivers of the same language vs. the infants' preference for caregivers of the same race?

:shade: I wish (in-group & out-group) people would not confuse – would stop conflating – bias & prejudice with racism.

Where exactly is the dividing line?

Power.

There's a plenty of papers on people's preferences for people who are genetically and/or phenotypically similar to them, if that's what you're getting at. You're not talking huge effect sizes though. It seems more like a predilection that requires the right enviornment to metastisize.

If you're trying to define "racism" though, good luck. The definition of racism, white supremecy, etc. changes depending on what political camp you belong to. You'll have to sift through the spurious analogies of White grievance politics and hear how Tucker Carlson is the biggest victim of racism in America, along with the battle cries of the culture warriors of the Great Awokening, who have their own language at this point. These new terms are often aimed at offending people, since finding an opponent to righteously revolt against is half the goal of Woke rhetoric. I can't say the enviornment lends itself to good analysis.

If you're trying to define "racism" though, good luck. The definition of racism, white supremecy, etc. changes depending on what political camp you belong to. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, my friend, it's inescapably clear what "racism" means to anyone who has the courage or the scars to be honest enough to apply the ancient Roman dicta Cui bono? to this
over-policed,
under-democratized,
corporatist (gangster neolib)
status quo
... as well as the entire span of American history since the 1701 Virginia Slave-codes through a century of "Jim Crow" apartheid-segregation culiminating in the 1970 "Law & Order" War on Drugs to the 2021 deluge of (tr45hy) Voter Suppression Laws, across about 40 states, which have targeted working class & poor jurisdictions of majority communities of color since the failed 6th of January Coup by MAGA/QAnon "White Nationalists". Cui effin' bono.

Btw, Count, just because a term can be defined differently by different users of the term doesn't entail that some uses of that term cannot be more apt or warranted by evidence and the broader historical context than others. Good trouble, sir, not only "good luck", is what we need.

Excellent question. If intolereance, herein an euphemism for racism, is transmitted like a disease through one's genes then it makes sense that about two years ago a question/thread on the forum, "is racism justified?" was left unanswered and the answers offered were far from satisfactory. The question, "is racism justified?" makes, as per what's implied by the OP, an unjustified assumption viz. racism is a reasoned position, that people consider the issue of other races rationally. Inherited i.e. genetically handed down racist traits would render the question, "is racism justified?" moot.

More worrying is the issue of how this makes disabusing racists of their supremacist ideas is a lost cause for if a belief, here racism, isn't based on logical argumentation, attempting a refutation or counter-argument is pointless.

@180 Proof, I'd like you to chime in.

Excellent question. — TheMadFool

Thanks. The OP is a year old, though. I was responding to someone who subsequently disappeared.

Racism, I think, can be justified IFF (A) the concept of "race" is factually warranted by biological sciences, (B) comparative "superiority" of one "race" over another "race" or over all other "races" is measured with the consensus of all "races" involved on the results (like the final scores of a football game), and (C) the ideology of "racial supremacy" – that the right (or license), independent of whether or not members have the "might" to do so, of any "race" to exploit (enslave) and dominate (scapegoat) any other "race" – is soundly demonstrated to be true.

If (A) fails,
then (B & C) necessarily fail.
(A) is demonstrably unwarranted;
therefore, "racism" is maniifestly unjustified. QED.

The more profound ethical and existential question is: Even if racism is justified (as above), would you exercise your "superiority" over members of an "inferior" race the way we humans usually – casually – subjugate and use non-human livestock & wild animals? (Would I?)

just because a term can be defined differently by different users of the term doesn't entail that some uses of that term cannot be more apt or warranted by evidence and the broader historical context than others. — 180 Proof

:up:

Racism, I think, can be justified IFF (A) the concept of "race" is factually warranted in biology, (B) comparative "superiority" of one "race" over another "race" or over all other "races" is measured with the consensus of all "races" involved on the results (like the final scores of a football game), and (C) the ideology of "racial supremacy" – that the right (or license), independent of whether or not members have the "might" to do so, of any "race" to exploit (enslave) and dominate (scapegoat) any other "race" – is soundly demonstrated to be true.

If (A) is not true,
then (B & C) necessarily fail.
(A) is demonstrably false;
therefore, "racism" is maniifestly unjustified. QED. — 180 Proof

:ok:

Race according to Wikipedia is a phenotype-based concept - a system of categorization of our species (homo sapiens) premised on differences in (external) physical features.

That out of the way, one particular side to racism that seems germane to the issue is that of racial purity by which I refer to the racist ideal of promoting/maintaing what in many circles is known as a bloodline but this boils down to our all-time-favorite activity, sex/coitus. The problem is that, as you rightly pointed out, if, I quote, "the concept of 'race' is factually warranted in biology" interracial sex should be impossible or if possible should result in genetic dead ends like ligers and tigons. In short, that the bloodlines of a race can be "corrupted" or "tainted" by simply going to bed with a member of another race makes racism untenable; after all, if race were really about purity of a stock then why can it be made "impure" with such ease? The biology of so-called races doesn't support, in fact it opposes, racism.

Please note, I'm still not as confident of my conclusion as I'd like to be.

Fuck racists! I mean that literally of course.

:up:

This is anecdotal evidence, of course.
I grew up in what was almost entirely a monoracial monoculture. I am certain that we were taught racism. From what I can remember, at first, none of the kids cared one way or another about race, it was simply not an issue. But then some liberal, politically correct school policy was introduced according to which we whites were all assumed to be evil racists and needed to be taught interracial tolerance. This policy came along with reverse racism, where the few people of other races were given extra care, credit, and protection by those in positions of power. So those few kids of other race got away with shit that the rest of us would be punished for. Yes, that taught us racism.

The usefulness of terms in analysis and debates is tied to their communicative power. There has been an attempt to redefine racism racism as "race-based prejudice plus power," or White Supremacy far more broadly as "all systemic racism in White majority countries (or sometimes even racism occuring in places with vanishingly small White populations is deemed a consequence of White supremecy, racism by non-white people must be, definitionally, internalized racism).

The goal of the redefinition is provocative. Everyone agrees Neo-Nazis and the KKK advance "White supremacy." That would be the commonly accepted definition of the term circa as recently as 2005. When things such as credit scores are called "White supremacist" the goal is obviously the to provoke a reaction and reappraisal of larger systems. Since I generally agree with the policy goals and explanations of social trends that people using this language have, I can get on board to this with some degree. However, the definitional switch certainly causes unhelpful backlash in some cases.

There is nothing wrong with this goal, or the definitions per say, but you end up with a morphing concept of White Supremecy that shoots out like an anime-Akira style monster, devouring all analysis and passing everything through its lens.

Thus I have seen the following explanations, all parsed in the new language of Wokeness.

>Racism was invented by White people in the 1700s.
>Enmity between racial groups in Asia based on phenotype are the product of White Supremecy and internalized racism and didn't exist before White influence in the region. They couldn't have, because racism necissarily involves Whiteness. The extreme anti-black racism found in East Asia must have been imported.
>The study of intelligence and all means to measure it are actually an instrument of White Supremecy. It is pseudo science created to support racism, as evidenced by the fact that it shows intergroup variances (although you would think that the White supremacist scientists would have found a definition of intelligence where East Asians and Ashkenazim didn't reliably outscore them).
>Iran has an authoritarian government because the US supported a coup there. That the US involvement was a single case officer making phone calls and dispensing about $100,000 is irrelevant. Agency exists for White males, but is constrained, sometimes to the point of non-existence in other peoples. Thus, history can largely be understood by looking at the foreign policy of European nations.

I could go on. My objection to the redefinitions is that they are often paired with highly reductive, and ahistorical reasoning (see above). They're also paired with an almost substance dualist denial of how factors that track with identity can effect group behaviors. Between group differences based on sex in Big Five personality traits are more well established than global warming, but are denied purely on the basis of wanting to preserve a "blank slate" ideology for the left.

"Racism equals bias plus power," is meaningless without a definition of power. Power in a single interpersonal relationship? Power as respects a given community? Power only at the national level? Or power stretched to the global level? The problem with that definition is that "power" often takes the last definition, taking concepts of "power" globally. You end up with an odd sort of reverse Great Chain of Being, with agency and moral responsibility resting at the top, with White males, and increasing moral rectitude and lack of agency (moral rectitude because of decreasing agency) flowing down. It's almost teleological in it's explanation of all social forces.

You end up with a definition that is essentially "racism is the lay definition of racism (i.e. prejudice), but only when a White person is doing it, or an Asian person to a Black or Latino person, etc." down the Great Chain. Does that definition have anymore analytical power than the lay understanding at that point? I'd argue no, but is has attached to it a lot of reductive baggage.

Okay. I'm not interested your semantic word salad. Have a good one.

Race isn't something it's possible to define using biology, that's for sure. But it is something based in biology, and has real uses in the biological sciences.

For example, I worked as a research assistant/tech at a glaucoma speciality clinical for awhile. Some diagnostic tools for glaucoma do not work without controlling for race. The cup of the optic nerve varies enough by race that someone must be compared to a data set of people of the same race for the diagnostic to be effective.

As for hybrids, different species can produce fertile offspring. No biologist says Neanderthals were Homo Sapiens, but they could produce fertile offspring with Homosapiens. Indeed, humans have recent, biologically speaking, Neanderthal ancestors, with Eurasians having more Neanderthal DNA than the peoples of SSA.

Some recognized "sub-species" of animal are more genetically similar that distant groups of humans. Not dividing humans up into such groups makes sense because there has been a large amount of genetic exchange between groups throughout history. So even though two groups of humans can be fairly far apart genetically, the transition between groups happens on a gradient, due to the endemic presence of humans across the globe. This makes producing defining lines difficult. And at any rate, in the new globalized world such differences become irrelevant. Classifying humans as we do animals also comes with all sorts of baggage and is best avoided in any case.

It's also hard to mesh definitions of race with prejudice seen in the world. India has virulent racism/prejudice based on skin tone, but from a phenotypical standpoint people on the sub-continent are more similar to each other than those outside.

Maybe I was a bit verbose.

To sum up: "racism is prejudice + power" is meaningless without defining power.

When I've inquired on this before, "power" has been defined in stark racial terms. For example, Zimbabwe doesn't have racist policies against White citizens, because historically they had power. I've certainly seen many explanations that say Asians can be racist against Blacks, but not vice versa.

Point is, at that point you seem dangerously close to saying "racism is just prejudice, but the term should only be used based on the race of the person being prejudiced," which is a garbage definition that offers nothing outside the original definition, except some moral loading the word racism has.

To sum up: "racism is prejudice + power" is meaningless without defining power. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's usually apparent. I take 180 to be saying that if a purple person, say, judges all other colors to be inferior to purple, this is intolerance or prejudice, but it's not racism unless purple people are systemically advantaged.

So in a case where purples are disenfranchised, though they may be failing to see the humanity of other people in exactly the same way racist people fail, they aren't racist.

That's how I've generally understood it too. The issue I have is the scope of power relations. Systemic imbalances can occur in varying ways, at varrying levels of social organization. At the local level, political leaders (who I generally take it can be said to wield power) can have prejudice that runs counter to regional/national trends. I've seen a hire criticized by a city council for lack of diversity, and when it was pointed out that the candidate was Latina, as requested, a hot mic picked up an objection that the candidate was "too light skinned."

That's clearly prejudice following a power dynamic. My objection is that definitions generally wave instances like these away, because systems at the national/global level tip the other way. This scope is then expanded historically as well, at which point it seems the definition is essentially bound to race, and looses any real distinction related to power relations between people, but is rather fixed to racial categories. You could essentially create a flow chart between races to denote when prejudice becomes racism at a global level. At that point, I think you've lost almost all your explanatory power in distinguishing the two terms.

I've seen a hire criticized by a city council for lack of diversity, and when it was pointed out that the candidate was Latina, as requested, a hot mic picked up an objection that the candidate was "too light skinned."

That's clearly prejudice following a power dynamic. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Did you know that Obama's father was from a lower class group in Kenya so that if Obama had been born there, he never would have risen to prominence? "Racism" is going to be unwieldy at the global level no matter how you define it, isn't it?

I think the power+prejudice definition is about something psychological. Think of a journey of the oppressed, kind of like the Hero's Journey. It's a story arc that gets played out.

At the beginning of the arc a person has internalized intolerance. This is the black child who prefers the white doll. It's a long road from here and it's not pretty. There's lots of rage. It's precarious because one of the possibilities is that the oppressed can end up becoming just like the oppressor. Down that trail, defining racism as prejudice+power is serving a particular need: the need to remain virtuous as one is actually sinking down into monstrousness. A person may even realize it's happening, but can't find the way out. There is a way out, but it's hidden in plain sight.

To sum up: "racism is prejudice + power" is meaningless without defining power. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Trivially obvious. And yet since you don't care to understand you forgo the principle of charity to score cheap points in your own mind. We've been here before, Count, and I've never not defined in context clearly, explicitly what I meant. An example (follow the link back to that thread for context):

↪Count Timothy von Icarus
Perhaps true of prejudice but not racism (i.e. power to enforce prejudice). — 180 Proof

Don't waste our time with trifling word games. Either you can talk about racism directly, bluntly, informatively, or you cannot – for whatever reason – but leave bs out of the discussion.

A quick search of "180 Proof" & "prejudice + power" will generate dozens of posts in which I define power in a number of descriptive, succinct, ways and its role in the concept of racism. Don't agree with my structural-systemic analysis? Okay, then deconstruct it or posit an operational alternative; I'm very much open to learning something new so long as it's substantiated by relevant facts and historical contexts. It's the trivialities and truisms I have no use for.

Thank you, I really like that explanation. I think that is a good way to look at it.


Sorry, I didn't mean to be uncharitable. My initial post in this thread wasn't responding to your specific definitions, and neither was my clarification after your response. I am trying to lay out what I see as the pitfalls of a more nuanced definition of racism than just "prejudice stemming from race."

I think Frank's explanation makes a lot of sense. I wasn't trying at a personal attack, and to be honest I hadn't read enough of your view points to formulate one even if I wanted to. I was expressing where the more nuanced definitions have gone off the rails in my own experience. I can think back particularly to an ethics class I had in graduate school where the argument was made, as I put it above, that racism could be defined on pretty much a global level as defining relationships between given races. That is, power dynamics to enforce prejudice would be assumed to hold at the relevant level of analysis across the world, and across much of history.

I don't think that sort of definition is helpful, and is emblematic of a popular mode of reductive thinking on the left, and that is, unfortunately, how the question "how do you define power," has been answered for me many times.

I appreciate your effort to meet half way and apologies if I was less than charitable myself. (No excuse but not sleeping much lately and poorly when I do.) Perhap this old post from an old thread will lend some contextual depth to my thinking on racism as an admittedly misused and abused term in everyday babble.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/350173

Whether or not you agree, Count, more informative, no? (Note that post is a little spicy but civility was wearing thin after 34pp.)

Yeah, I can get on board with that definition. I think "systemic racism," is another tricky term I believe. Should it apply to all systems which disadvantage outgroups, or should the term have an element of intent in its definition? I generally supported a definition that didn't include intent before, but I'm starting to realize that this makes all sorts of positive feedback loops and covariances fall under "structural racism," such that an expansive enough definition includes all cases where group means differ, and essentially includes third variable problems into the definition (by definition, right?).

This is preferable for demonstrating the scope of problems of feedback loops, but also seems to blur causal relationships. Linking a cause back to structural racism is less useful when structural racism means "instances of systems that produce outcomes that vary by group," since at that point the definition is almost tautological. However, including an aspect of intent also damages the term because people can quibble endlessly about intent, and it ignores how individuals' intent in structural racism becomes meaningless, it is "systemic" precisely because it perpetuates and sustains itself without intent. It would be nice if the rhetoric didn't matter as much, but there is very much a necissary "marketing" component to the struggle against racism, where getting your ideas to land with the people who need to hear them most is fraught with dangers.



---

Anyhow, to being it back to the original topic, I think their might be a parallel with attitudes towards homosexuality in terms of a predaliction for bias. Homosexuality is common in humans, occuring in all societies across historical periods. Anti-homosexual bias is endemic, being common across many societies, but not historically universal. The scale of such bias is also highly variable, from it being considered just shameful in the Near East of mid-late antiquity, to the genocidal bias Europeans inherited from the Hebrews.

The endemic nature, across cultures and times speaks to something innate in people, a sort of bias. The lack of universality shows that innate trend is not particularly strong, and hardly impossible to overcome.

Racism would be the combination of phenotype bias that we inherited, when codified at the civilizational level. Civilization itself, with its interlocking web of feedback loops in turn amplifies bias, while giving it structure, changing it from bias into the chains of racism.

:100:

You do have a sense for kin, but you “break” out of it. The west got it right. The individual is the salvation. So group identity should be dropped. It’s essentially tribalism and tribes go too war.