Racism Is Never Going Away

I am not concerned about race, but this is what I have to say

I am African, a sub-Saharan African to be precise. This is just a nice and long way of saying; I’m a Black man.

Being Black affords you many privileges, one of them being the opportunity to potentially be on the receiving end of racism or discrimination. I have been on the receiving end and I can tell you it’s not pretty.

Racism and discrimination are usually portrayed as a White vs Black struggle; this is the dominant theme in popular culture. It’s the Whites that oppress the Blacks; it’s always the White folks discriminating against the Black folks, or being racist to them in one way or the other. These stories have become so popular that privileged white women now have a collective name; Karen. Karen is a moniker for privileged middle-class white women who think the world should revolve around them and their way of seeing things.

But if Karen exists for white women, what names should be used for Black women? After all, despite the portrayal in popular culture, racism is not unique to the White community. In order words, White, Black, Brown, no matter the colour you are, we are all capable of racism. We are not just capable; we also exhibit racism whenever we get the chance to do so. That’s because biologically, we have been hard-wired to be racists.

Prof. Gil Diesendruck, a professor of Psychology at Bar-Ilan University did some research to find out to what extent racism and discrimination are innate.

He says we are born with the ability and compulsion to sort people into groups, a trait that our environment amplifies because it was essential for our survival as a species.

“It’s an evolutionary need, and therefore it’s an intuitive and universal trait. In the ancient world, but also today in certain situations, it was important for a person to be able to map and sort the people around him”

We are born with the ability to classify things based on how much they look like us or different from us. The ones that look like us are put in the ‘in-group’ category whereas others that look different from us are an out-group. In many ways, this creates an Us vs them mentality where members of the in-group are seen in a more positive light than members of the out-group. Racism in a lot of ways is a consequence of this natural grouping ability.

“…On one hand, defining the in-group creates cohesion among its members, cooperation, and the possibility of achieving things as a group…. At the same time defining the out-group leads me to be alert and cautious towards its members who are competing with me for resources…”

Based on his research with Israeli kids, he concluded that “…categorizing into groups and discrimination on the basis of this categorization is an inherent trait”

But the evidence isn’t that straightforward. Anybody who hasn’t been living under a rock has seen a video of a picture of kids of different races playing with each other.

Children do not particularly seem to care about race or skin color. Put children of different races in the same room and they would play without discrimination if they are in the mood to. Some scientists have argued that although we have an innate ability to categorize objects and beings in our environment, this categorization does not extend to race. As we grow, our culture and the adults around us teach us to categorize people based on race. The argument is that although we need markers to help us categorize who is the in-group, other characteristics take precedence over race.

But this argument doesn’t tell the full story. If indeed humans are born with an innate ability for categorization — this fact is undisputed amongst scientists — then what screams ‚stranger’ more than a person’s physical appearance?

Race is real. There are differences in physical appearance between different races; skin color, hair texture, etc. However, no evidence has been found to suggest the existence of any difference(s) in intellectual capacity or other higher-order functions. In other words, no race is superior to the other, and eugenics does not stand the test of scientific scrutiny.

Denying race is akin to denying our differences. This is an exercise in futility because it’s a fight against our physical reality; the physical differences such as skin color, language, hair, etc are all too obvious. Our world is organized by our racial differences. Sciences like medicine — but not limited to medicine — are studied along racial lines in a bid to understand how different diseases or drugs affect people differently based on their race.

It is impossible to have a world where race is not a factor. We are different. However, even in our differences, we share many similarities. Focusing on and celebrating our similarities instead of highlighting our differences will go a long way toward creating a more harmonious and fair world.

On the other hand, it is possible to have a world where we agree that we are different but equal. Difference and equality are not mutually exclusive.