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Abstract

f an African person ever called her ‘sister.’ Usually she’d tell the person who said it that she wasn’t “A dirty African nigger, and she wasn’t their sister.” You don’t even have to be a different colour from somebody for them to racially profile, harass or abuse you. And then you have people like Lennox Lewis who call others of Caribbean heritage like Frank Bruno, Uncle Toms.</p><p id="fda0">Obviously there are exceptions, but Indians hate Pakistanis and vice versa, they’re the same colour. A lot of English people hate Polish people. And a lot of Polish people think English people are lazy. Even English people often think English people lazy, so they’d rather hire Lithuanians or Poles. But there are less Europeans to hire now, because a lot of people voted for Brexit, and that vote was largely driven by racism. A lot of Chinese people hate Japanese people and vice versa. Recently China has been accused of subjecting Japanese visitors to unnecessary anal swabs in light of Covid related travel restrictions.</p><h2 id="72a1">Just because you have coloured friends…</h2><p id="2cd0">For 22 years, my best friend was Indian. He was in the same class as one of my best friends from primary school, who was also Indian. They were both Sikh, and I’ve had a lot of Sikh friends. My Pakistani father, who lived through partition, didn’t like Indians much. Of all the friends from school I’m still in touch with all these decades later on Facebook, the one I spend most time talking to is of mixed heritage (African and English). My children are also of mixed heritage. But despite all of that, I associate different characteristics to different ethnicities. That makes me a racist. I have mental heuristics, because without them we are unable to cope with the amount of information that we receive. We all take mental shortcuts, we have to. Sometimes those shortcuts are like Ikea furniture; the pieces are already there, in society, culture and media, we just have to fit them together, which is easy. We call them stereotypes.</p><h2 id="7c15">Just because you’ve been a victim…</h2><p id="5fc9">Being a victim of racism doesn’t seem to make people work harder against it. Unfortunately, the worst types of racism often seem to breed more racism. The victim can become the aggressor. Native South Africans suffered terribly under white rule for for nearly half a century. Since apartheid ended, the tables have turned, and white South Africans routinely suffer from brutal and institutionalised racism. Several white farmers have been horrifically murdered and employments prospects for white are terrible. The most persecuted people in the last century were the Jews, but Israeli treatment of Palestinians and minority Christians is undeniably oppressive and in contravention of various international and human rights laws.</p><p id="e0ce">Why is racism so endemic? Why do the oppressed so often become the oppressors?</p><h2 id="5357">It’s us and them…</h2><p id="aaf0">Racism is just another

Options

expression of the in-group out-group effect. That’s why it will never go away. Our brains are wired to place people into categories, either they’re one of us, or they’re one of them. The most obvious cues we have are visual, and they are ones our brains respond fastest to. In the absence of visual cues, if we are speaking to a person on the phone, or if all we have to go by is their name for example, we will form a picture of them. We all judge a book by it’s cover.</p><p id="5db8">A person who is visibly different to you is in the out group. If the person is visibly similar to you (same skin colour) but has some other characteristic (religious affiliation, country of origin) which makes them part of a different group, they are still one of the outgroup. This is why blacks can racially abuse other blacks, whites can racially abuse other whites, and Asians can racially abuse each other as well.</p><p id="c915">There will always be in groups and out group, and they will always compete for resources and advantages, imagined or real. It’s basic psychology and it’s not going to go away. When that psychological shortcut gets adopted by a political party, or by a group, it reinforces itself and the consequences are usually awful. That’s what happened in Nazi Germany, and more recently in Serbia and Myanmar with the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and the Rohingya people.</p><h2 id="739b">But there is a way around it…</h2><p id="2bd1">You’re never going to stop sweating, but that doesn’t mean you have to stink. You can use anti perspirants and deodorants, and you can shower and and do your laundry regularly. Similarly, all people are never going to look the same, speak the same, eat the same or think the same. We will remain forever cognizant of our differences, but we don’t have to be racist arseholes. Relying on heuristics is a useful way to avoid neural overload, but in some areas of our life, the easiest route isn’t always the most beneficial.</p><p id="a941">If we can get past the visual cues, and concentrate on what we have in common, life becomes a lot more enjoyable.</p><p id="9fa9">My wife is about as physically and temperamentally different from me as you could imagine, but we’ve been together for over 2 decades, because we found something we have in common that matters to us. Our values.</p><p id="707c">If you’re mature enough, you can also laugh at your own ethnicity and culture. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.</p><p id="c647">Studies which concentrate on similarities like team affiliation in sports, show that people can overcome their neural wiring. Being on the same team as somebody else, regardless of their ethnicity, can override the brains tendency to place them in the outgroup and be more critical of them.</p><p id="7dcf">We all sweat, we all stink, we’re all racist. We can’t end racism. But with a bit of effort, we can get to the point where we’re not all racist arseholes.</p><p id="259f">Wouldn’t that be wonderful?</p></article></body>

We can’t end racism

Because we’re all racists

Racism is inevitable and it will never go away. It’s like body odour. When we’re too hot, our bodies perspire to cool down, and the liquid produced doesn’t smell good. When people of different ethnicities intermingle, they are evidently different. Even if they share all of the same opinions, beliefs and values, that doesn’t change their skin colour, their physical characteristics, or any of the other adaptations honed by millions of years in differing climates. White people are white, brown people are brown, black people are black. You’re kidding yourself if you think it’s all the same.

In most countries, most ethnicities are represented. They are neighbours, colleagues, friends, foes, strangers and lovers. There’s no getting away from it. Secularism is here to stay. And it’s a good thing. But with secularism comes racism.

I’m not racist, I have black friends…

Usually, a person who has to point out that they aren't racist is either out and out racist or feels conscious of the possibility that they might be racist. Donald Trump is a case in point. How many times did he have to tell everybody that he was the least racist person in the room?

I have black friends. My wife is white. In fact, since I was 17 and my hormones were at full tilt, every single woman I’ve ever found insanely attractive has been white. On the flip side, I’ve never been sexually attracted to an Asian woman or an African woman. Doesn’t that make me racist?

Even black people can be racist…

It was one of my black friends who told me I should never trust a nigger.’ Yep, I used the N word, and so did he. So do rappers, so do white extremists. Saying that the phrase is only offensive when used by a non-African person or a non-Caribbean person is ridiculous. No skin colour makes you immune to being racist. Just like no skin colour makes you immune from racism, though there’s no doubt that white people suffer from it less than their darker-skinned peers. That’s only because white people have had so much power for so long. If brown people ran the world, the tables would be turned.

Everybody is racist…

I’ve been spat at by white people (no surprise), Indians (not white at all), and Israelis (about the same colour as me). None of them were black. That said, I’ve also been called a Paki and an Abjad (that was one I hadn’t heard before) by black people. I once worked with a Caribbean woman who would become very animated if an African person ever called her ‘sister.’ Usually she’d tell the person who said it that she wasn’t “A dirty African nigger, and she wasn’t their sister.” You don’t even have to be a different colour from somebody for them to racially profile, harass or abuse you. And then you have people like Lennox Lewis who call others of Caribbean heritage like Frank Bruno, Uncle Toms.

Obviously there are exceptions, but Indians hate Pakistanis and vice versa, they’re the same colour. A lot of English people hate Polish people. And a lot of Polish people think English people are lazy. Even English people often think English people lazy, so they’d rather hire Lithuanians or Poles. But there are less Europeans to hire now, because a lot of people voted for Brexit, and that vote was largely driven by racism. A lot of Chinese people hate Japanese people and vice versa. Recently China has been accused of subjecting Japanese visitors to unnecessary anal swabs in light of Covid related travel restrictions.

Just because you have coloured friends…

For 22 years, my best friend was Indian. He was in the same class as one of my best friends from primary school, who was also Indian. They were both Sikh, and I’ve had a lot of Sikh friends. My Pakistani father, who lived through partition, didn’t like Indians much. Of all the friends from school I’m still in touch with all these decades later on Facebook, the one I spend most time talking to is of mixed heritage (African and English). My children are also of mixed heritage. But despite all of that, I associate different characteristics to different ethnicities. That makes me a racist. I have mental heuristics, because without them we are unable to cope with the amount of information that we receive. We all take mental shortcuts, we have to. Sometimes those shortcuts are like Ikea furniture; the pieces are already there, in society, culture and media, we just have to fit them together, which is easy. We call them stereotypes.

Just because you’ve been a victim…

Being a victim of racism doesn’t seem to make people work harder against it. Unfortunately, the worst types of racism often seem to breed more racism. The victim can become the aggressor. Native South Africans suffered terribly under white rule for for nearly half a century. Since apartheid ended, the tables have turned, and white South Africans routinely suffer from brutal and institutionalised racism. Several white farmers have been horrifically murdered and employments prospects for white are terrible. The most persecuted people in the last century were the Jews, but Israeli treatment of Palestinians and minority Christians is undeniably oppressive and in contravention of various international and human rights laws.

Why is racism so endemic? Why do the oppressed so often become the oppressors?

It’s us and them…

Racism is just another expression of the in-group out-group effect. That’s why it will never go away. Our brains are wired to place people into categories, either they’re one of us, or they’re one of them. The most obvious cues we have are visual, and they are ones our brains respond fastest to. In the absence of visual cues, if we are speaking to a person on the phone, or if all we have to go by is their name for example, we will form a picture of them. We all judge a book by it’s cover.

A person who is visibly different to you is in the out group. If the person is visibly similar to you (same skin colour) but has some other characteristic (religious affiliation, country of origin) which makes them part of a different group, they are still one of the outgroup. This is why blacks can racially abuse other blacks, whites can racially abuse other whites, and Asians can racially abuse each other as well.

There will always be in groups and out group, and they will always compete for resources and advantages, imagined or real. It’s basic psychology and it’s not going to go away. When that psychological shortcut gets adopted by a political party, or by a group, it reinforces itself and the consequences are usually awful. That’s what happened in Nazi Germany, and more recently in Serbia and Myanmar with the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and the Rohingya people.

But there is a way around it…

You’re never going to stop sweating, but that doesn’t mean you have to stink. You can use anti perspirants and deodorants, and you can shower and and do your laundry regularly. Similarly, all people are never going to look the same, speak the same, eat the same or think the same. We will remain forever cognizant of our differences, but we don’t have to be racist arseholes. Relying on heuristics is a useful way to avoid neural overload, but in some areas of our life, the easiest route isn’t always the most beneficial.

If we can get past the visual cues, and concentrate on what we have in common, life becomes a lot more enjoyable.

My wife is about as physically and temperamentally different from me as you could imagine, but we’ve been together for over 2 decades, because we found something we have in common that matters to us. Our values.

If you’re mature enough, you can also laugh at your own ethnicity and culture. There’s nothing wrong with doing that.

Studies which concentrate on similarities like team affiliation in sports, show that people can overcome their neural wiring. Being on the same team as somebody else, regardless of their ethnicity, can override the brains tendency to place them in the outgroup and be more critical of them.

We all sweat, we all stink, we’re all racist. We can’t end racism. But with a bit of effort, we can get to the point where we’re not all racist arseholes.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful?