h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I suspect racism goes back to the days of early humans when people lived in little groups. Your safety and your access to food depended on the people in your group. When your group met another group, you were wary of them.

OK, we now live in cities and meet people of all different races and religions. The cave man in us still says 'be careful of these strangers'. Of course we must learn to tell that cave man 'I must value these people as individuals' but I don't know if you can turn off the cave man altogether.

I disagree with the 'naturalness' of racism - respectfully and humbly , and I'll tell you why. One reason is that our earliest ancestors probably didn't live in caves. Anthropologists get very angry with us all for insisting on those cave men. I'm wondering if it isn't because people are thinking of the Ice Age?

Then there's the idea that racism is somehow connected to tribalism. I don't think so - at least, it's not that simple. If even Palaeolithic people (who may really have lived in caves, sometimes) disliked each other on the basis of skin, hair, and eye colour, there wouldn't be any blue-eyed, blond people in the world - because those are late genetic sports. And recessive. Also there wouldn't be so much Neanderthal in our DNA. And I've got a fair amount, like everybody else with Scottish ancestors. In other words, it's 'normal' to have dark skin and eyes, so there's nothing natural about claiming superiority over mutated genes.

Tribalism is, I agree, a tendency. But racism is an invented problemm because 'race' isn't a real thing. In the US, it was invented by landholders in Virginia in the 17th Century to divide workers and control power. I've been places on Earth where people can't even see the 'racial' differences that seem to plague European and European-American perceptions. We have strong evidence that these racist attitudes were deliberately promoted among early colonists - and that before they took hold, intermarriage among ethnic groups was completely usual. (Ask me about the Bushyhead family sometime. )

Finally, I think you've hit on an excellent point about changing these attitudes.

1. We have to stop thinking it's 'natural' to be hostile and suspicious of people with whom we are obviously sharing an environment.

2. We need to stop thinking of acceptance of our neighbours as a virtuous exercise that requires extraordinary effort on our part, and start realising that it's the hostility that's unnatural and counterproductive.

I think the idea that we have an internal cave man is an excuse some people made up because they wanted to take advantage of other people. They've got so good at selling the idea that they're snowing everybody else, until even the people like you and me, who don't think like that, accept the idea that our tolerance for each other is abnormal.

And we've got to put a stop to that.

Going back to a rather flippant email exchange about the Romans....

If everywhere was Rome, was there any racism back then?

My thinking, for the thrippence it's worth; if you're a decent person, great, if you're a ****, you're a ****, doesn't matter where you're from or what you look like.

Be decent, don't be a ****!

Amen to that.

Racism is a made-up construct. There are many permutations of skin color and facial structure and hair texture. A tanned Italian passes for white, but a light-skinned Ethiopean doesn't, even though their skin may be equally "dark."

In the 19th Century, some people thought of the Irish as equivalent to the Blacks.

There is no formula to guide anyone in figuring out what will cause sexual attraction between two people. If there were, matchmaking services would be more successful.

So, lots of things are mysteries, including the continuing success of fallacious thinking. (We have a Vice president who's been exposed to Covid-19, but won't quarantine himself. he insists on presiding over th Senate, in case a tied vote must be broken.

Just a perspective from over here in Africa. There's a heck of a lot of 'mistrust of others' over here. In South Africa we have lots of different ethnicities, so even black folks have prejudices against other black folks. Especially in South Africa many don't like black folks from up north, such as Zimbabweans or Nigerians. Zimbabweans are usually illegal immigrants fleeing the complete social collapse of their home country. They're often willing to work very hard for very little money. So locals think they're 'taking our jobs'. Sounds familiar? And Nigerians are often suspected of being corrupt, of dealing in drugs and other kinds of organized crime ...