No no no!

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I don't know why these racism posts appear here, perhaps to attempt to
accquire some sort of "scientific" legitimacy by association?
Certainly one can discover differences in different human
populations, but there are a lot of overlapping bell-curves no
matter how ethnocentric one's measurement standards are: there really
are some very good white basketball players; some fine black brain
surgeons (I used to rent a room from one);some lazy Japanese;etc.
etc. Notwithstanding that many of the generalised stereotypes may
be culturally originated rather than "genetic", and many others
may simply be misperceptions. And if there are any Jewish plots,
I'm afraid the average Jew is probably as much much in the dark about
it as you are (whoever you are)!
The real problem with racism is not so much that it is about
race but that it's about hate: why do we need to hate so? To expand
a little on this: if I have a bad experience with a green man, I
may well be justified in treating the next green man with some
distrust; and if I have a bad experience with him too, then my
distrust is likely to solidify. However if I hear some good
opinions about green men, and also some bad opinions about "them"
and then choose to base my attitude exclusively on those bad
opinions whether I have met any green men or not, I would be
in a sorry state. It would do me no good (nor anyone else) to
pretend I was not in this sorry state: that would just submerge it
beyond the reach of my rational awareness. This is what "Political
Correctness" would have us do - and the underlying sorry state
would just be submerged, compressed, till the opportunity for
(perhaps violent) release came. Yet in society we must set examples
for rising generations - and I would maintain that such an example
would be most constructive if it encouraged self-knowledge rather
than just tempting prohibition. No easy answer...
Racism has an anatomy, whose main component is hate, which
in its turn results from fear, which results from association with
pain or its anticipation. Enter anywhere in this cycle and the other
ingredients - often in the form of others' inflammatory opinions -
will quickly come to hand. Treating "racism" as the disease, seems
to ignore it's more fundamental components. Even I, in this (as I hope
you can see) have made many simplifications: in truth each person
has his own, quite individual set of reasons for acting and
feeling as he does.
John Blyth

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