It’s almost as if racism is inherently illogical.
I mean not really. If you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint it’s perfectly logical.
Outside groups are dangerous. That’s true even within racial groups. Now add that not only are they outsiders they don’t look anything like your group. That’s another layer of outsiders being dangerous. Not only are they outsiders but they don’t look like you.
It’s a leftover piece of evolution that helped humans survive. Protect your own and everyone else can get fucked. Especially if they’re different.
You’re giving “race” as an arbitrary social construct special status above other characteristics. Height, hair color, etc.
You’re presupposing that race is more significant than these.
Furthermore, the flexibility of racial terms like “white” to include or exclude people like Italians and Irish over the decades also goes to show that it’s arbitrary and malleable.
Like religion, it’s just been a tool for political control. Conservatives love in groups and out groups, this is just the common one of the day.
Agreed. Some level of xenophobia is expected though. That’s especially true if you were to think that the other tribes phenotypes are reminiscent of disease or sickness. I’m pretty sure that what you’re pointing out about wars starting with land isn’t so much because humans want to protect their land but because settling in one spot makes one more xenophobic by nature. Your breeding group is now smaller so phenotypes become distinct. Which means that encountering outsiders or wanderers would increase that xenophobic response. Prior to that you’d have a more or less homogenous group within anywhere you could reach which means that xenophobia makes far less sense as you cannot always identify “tribe”.
To sum up what I’m saying: over time as complexity began, cooperation between phenotypes lessened and competition between distinct phenotypes emerged. This could be what drives a lot of human xenophobic behavior, especially in the modern day. As we developed language this got even worse as xenophobia now includes a language barrier. Meaning that outsiders marked themselves as such even if they held the same phenotypes. This led to a lot of tribalism and history has not evolved from there.
(Just a layman but I did some reading and thinking)
It’s almost as if people from the 60’s needed an absolutely ridiculous metaphor to drive home how illogical racism is. Reminds me of the Hutu vs Tutsi scene from Hotel Rwanda.
