Eradication of Racism?

Some say that war is inevitable, it is instinctive, explicitely engraved in the genes of human nature, through the need for security and the pursuit of power and territory. While NGOs and peace activists strive to stop military actions, halt weapons manufacturing, and promote the disarmament of states, it seems to be a widely accepted fact that war was, is and will always be an omni-present characteristic of mankind. Governments pursue the path to military armament and action under the excuse of buzz-words such as 'defense' or 'peace-keeping forces'. The fact is that everyone admits that a free world where everyone loves his neighbours and bakes them cheese-cakes and apple pies is unrealistic.

However, it seems that in the equally sensitive case of racism, most people seem to live detached from this same reality. I am not saying that racism is good, or should be tolerated or anything of this sort! However, I do not believe that racism can ever be eradicated, simply because this is also fruit of the same engraved traits of mankind.

Categorisation by Instinct

Let us think about how our mind works, how young children learn and how the same process continues to evolve as the child becomes an adult through experience and a process called categorisation. Categorisation is an important cognitive process that simplifies the components of the environment around us into generic classes. We dont give a unique name to the hundreds of objects we encounter every day, but classify them according to the common features they possess. This incredible capability permits us to classify objects; we recognise a chair from a table, a dog from a cat, a human from a chimpanzee etc... and it works incredibly well!

If one thinks a little, this feature is also crucial for survival in a primitive or wild environment. If a poisonous fruit killed your relative, it is of imperative importance that you recognise that fruit next time you encounter it while looking for food in the woods, or otherwise you'll end up dead too. The same counts for animals, which would make you afraid of snakes but not of rabbits.

Now what happens if a group of men from another tribe raid your campsite, steal your food and beat or kill whoever stand against them? The same process kicks in, and suddenly you categorise all the members of the other tribe as dangerous, enemies and a threat to you, your family and your tribe.

Invasion of the Comfort Zone

While one might argue that humanity has evolved from its savage roots into a civilized society, it is the same basic, primitive needs that we continuously strive to satisfy. It is not realistic to assume that humans will evolve into tolerant multicultural societies. This instinctive behaviour can be observed each time a minority group penetrates the 'comfort zone' of another community. The natives of the community will start feeling uneasy that the new group is capable of depriving them from the privileges they used to enjoy before the new group immigrated into their territory.

The differences in the values between the two groups are often blamed first, even if they are not the real reason. For instance, why is the Muslim tradition of women to wear something around their head such an issue that whole news programs have to cover it as an impending problem? Considering the absurdities of some fashion items in the western world, is this piece of cloth really the issue, or is it just an expression of the feeling of uneasyness that our racist survival instinct starts to generate?

Such feelings start to amplify themselves as soon as a member of the minority group does a mistake such as a petty crime. Can anyone say that crime is absent in his native community? I doubt it. However, if a couple of black people are caught pick pocketing, then our categorisation process kicks in again and suddenly all black people become criminals. Worst still, if an Arab is found guilty of rape, then all Arabs suddenly become rapists who come to our country to feast on our women.

Racism Backfiring

Normally the first generation of the minority group tends to succumb to this racist behaviour from the native community, since it is somewhat understood that there was some territory infiltration. However, bigger problems occur with the generations to come from both communities. The same racist feelings of the native community are often transmitted to the younger generation, often translating from discomfort into hatred, while the younger generation of the immigrant minority group tends to call the same territory home, and expects equal treatment, which often leads to retaliation. The minority group often finds comfort within itself and ghettos start to form which exclude the original natives from accessing the same space.

This story repeats itself all over again through history, where people migrate to other countries for political or economic reasons to find a better place to live, where its natives are not so welcoming. To a certain extent this behaviour is understandable, considering that after all, everyone will be competing for the same resources offered by that territory, be it land, work, and poperty.

Modern Slavery

And what about slavery? Has it been eradicated? In its original explicit form yes. However, it has taken other accepted forms which take advantage of such situations such as ghettos, society classes and illegal immigration. This is often taking the form of cheap labour without any insurance or security provisos whatsoever. Often you see such people doing odd jobs which no-one wants to do, underpaid and without any safety measures or insurance obligations. There have been cases where contractors hire illegal immigrants to help in construction work and after they finish the job they are dumped without being paid the last month's salary.

It seems it is being widely accepted that these forms of immigrants and minority groups sustain the micro-economy by keeping the natives in an elavated standard of living without having a high rate of inflation. Illegal immigrants often end up collecting rubbish or doing unskilled and tiring work on construction sites that the natives are reluctant to do, for a cheaper price. So isnt
this discrimination and racism? Isnt this a form of slavery? Or is the current situation so convenient for authorities and governments that no decision is ever taken to actually eradicate such practices?

Can we get rid of racism?

Frankly I don't believe we can ever get rid of racism and slavery. Racism is too inbuilt in your genes to be able to clean it off from your way of thinking. It is inevitable to categorise and generalise, and start rubber-stamping and stereo-typing people with common appearance characteristics as soon as one of them behaves in a certain way.

What society can do is prepare the necessary frameworks to limit and avoid conflicting situations. One cannot expect that a multicultural society can ever work so easily considering that it only worked in limited exceptional scenarios. If on the other hand society will subliminally promote racist practices such as cheap labour, due to economic interests, a situation of 'us' and 'them' will just be inevitable.

My First Blog

ok... not sure how this works but I guess this must be pretty much what is all to it.
So why this blog?

Well, caught between my long-preserved urge to publish a writing of my own and my innate lazyness to commit myself to write something serious, combined with my reluctance to publish articles on traditional newspapers, writing a blog seems to be the right channel to start shouting out all the contorted ideas that come to my mind.

And why the name?

Well, I dont know why, but I have a sort of premonition that this is going to really end up in a continuous criticism of what I dislike about governments, authority, economy, environmental policies and probably anything that mankind touched on our beloved planet which has probably been ruined through the same process.