Is Bigotry Taught?

[Seil]

In this thread, I was wondering about psychopathic behavior. (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showthread.php?t=30720) Now I'm wondering about social bigotry, like racism, sexism and homophobia. Looking at the reasons that it survived in the mainstream population as long as it did, and why it's still going on elsewhere. There are some debates right now out there about the subject. (http://www.helium.com/debates/87853-is-racism-taught-or-learned)

The idea that I have right now is that discrimination like racism is taught, that it's passed along from one generation to the next. For example, I looked up to my older brothers and my parents, and was taught a lot of different things from all of them - some less noteworthy than others, some more illegal than others, but I learned... I don't know how to phrase it - I guess "behavior?" I learned behavior from them, whether it was my dad's reservedness, my mom's quick temper, my oldest brother's toying nature, or my other brother's excuses. I have to say that I did learn from them, but I also can say that as I grew older, it was less about what I learned from them and more about applying what I have learned over my life.

There's a documentary called "The California Reich," in which it shows children being raised in a racially intolerant environment, and learning negatively about a wide variety of people and orientation. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsLHNN_Gy9E&feature=related) This school is trying to teach younger generations tolerance of homosexuality, and more about sexuality in general. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246077/Children-young-7-taught-homophobic-sexist-bullying-new-sex-education-curriculum.html)

I guess this goes hand in hand with the debate as to whether or not people are born evil, or are made evil through situations and experiences in their life - and in that I'm still of the belief that ignorance and hatred is something you learn. Thinking of the amount of discrimination present in society fifty years ago to the discrimination now, I genuinely believe that to be because it wasn't because people we born to hate, it's that we were taught to by people who already weren't very nice folks.

So there's one side of an argument - anyone of a different opinion?

[Amake]

I'm with Einstein: "'Common sense' is the sum of all prejudices one has accumulated by the age of 20."

Territorial aggression may be an instinct, but indulging in it, as well as channeling it into thinking less of people X are learned skills.

Searing insight edit: It occurred to me that as far as we know humans never marked their territory, in any way, until long after the words for "territory" was invented. Even now we have no clear definition of what it is. We have personal spaces that may be any size, neighborhoods that may or may not be marked by spray paint, internationally acknowledged national boundaries overlapping with cultural and economic ones. Maybe our entire history of oppressing minorities and condemning people who are different in any way is just misdirected frustration because we never learned to pee on trees.

[Hanuman]

Bigorty could be boiled down to mental rigidity, which has a lot to do with how they are taught, but also is a symptom of decreased number of brain cells being produced in conjunction with a "way" of thinking. In that sense we do teach bigotry but I also do believe it's both a sickness and a symptom of the aging process.
Mind you that not all people who age become rigid or overweight, it just depends how active they are.

THOUGH

Studies have shown that a sense of purpose and the same mental rigidity, tradition, ect. helps to preserve one's lifespan, it's just that the mental rigidity and faith are based on principles of physical and mental activity rather than thoughtless faith and a sedentary lifestyle.


RACISM I do not agree with, but only because it's stupid compared to Geneism//Eurogenetics, even if Racism has hints of truth, it's only a blunt and clumsy way of saying the underlying facts.

[Seil]

RACISM I do not agree with, but only because it's stupid compared to Geneism//Eurogenetics, even if Racism has hints of truth, it's only a blunt and clumsy way of saying the underlying facts.

It's not just that people are saying "Blacks aren't as smart as whites." It's "Blacks have a different skin color so they're not allowed to use the same water fountain." I don't think that a lot of racism is based around fact, it's based around the fact that that person over there is different.

[Osterbaum]

Racism is never based on fact, let alone logic.

And personally I believe that bigotry is very much taught. Again, the old nature vs. nurture, but I can't think of one thing about so called "human nature" that would automatically lead to bigotry.

[Azisien]

I guess this goes hand in hand with the debate as to whether or not people are born evil, or are made evil through situations and experiences in their life - and in that I'm still of the belief that ignorance and hatred is something you learn. Thinking of the amount of discrimination present in society fifty years ago to the discrimination now, I genuinely believe that to be because it wasn't because people we born to hate, it's that we were taught to by people who already weren't very nice folks.

So there's one side of an argument - anyone of a different opinion?[/color]

"Evil" being a questionable term in its own right, for the sake of this discussion, I would say the follows:

-A very, very small minority of people are born "evil."
-The rest of the "evil" people or perhaps more correctly, "evil" behaviours, are taught. Directly, or indirectly.

[Hanuman]

The facts are that a race is just a generalized grouping of genetic traits, traits which can be negative or positive.

Racism is the prejudice caused by the belief that one race will probably be X since that's the trend it follows, though racism as an opinion (a rather stupid opinion) has lost all of its power due to so much mixing of the races, ESPECIALLY in places other than the native origin of the race... I just spent 2 weeks in Quintana Roo and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people who are on average a foot shorter than I am will probably have a disadvantage when playing basketball.

Racist political action is 100% stupid, I agree.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

-A very, very small minority of people are born "evil."
-The rest of the "evil" people or perhaps more correctly, "evil" behaviours, are taught. Directly, or indirectly.

Also, the moral standards defining what's considered to be evil vary from culture to culture, from region to region, from town to town, from family to family and from person to person.

I'm sure you all know this already, but someone better say it.



Furthermore, I think people are shaped by all their experiences, which means they are taught to be what they are by whatever the hell they go through.
My humble opinion, but I think that's true.

[BloodyMage]

I'm not sure about other countries but it is the case in Northern Ireland where peoples religion and views on things like Catholicism and Protestantism is largely passed down from parents to children. Back when I went to high school, and even in primary school, there'd be a lot of kids who hated Catholicism and hated the school across the way because all the Catholics went to that school. The majority of them didn't even understand what they were hating though, but they hated them anyway and they, and their father, would usually march in the Orange order and celebrate the Battle of the Boyne, even though, as I said, they didn't even understand what they were doing. It was just passed down from one family member to another.

I mean that's a very regional and religious specific one, but I think that it can happen in other areas to like racism or sexism, where it may not be exactly 'taught' in such a sense, but children grow up in such an environment where their parents support something, and their parents send them to schools that support the same ideas and the vast majority simply grow up thinking that these kinds of things were normal and o.k. when they're not. It seems like most people learn to think for themselves after a while, which is good, but I think in most instances bigotry is probably 'taught' in a loose sense of the word.

[katiuska]

It depends on what you mean by bigotry. Humans are inherently categorical--human instinct isn't as simple as a direct stimulus and response, we create categories because we need them to tell us how to react to things. The tendency to create categories of "us" vs. "them" is unfortunately deeply held and possibly a habit developed out of years of tribalism (but not one that is impossible to overcome). If you mean specific beliefs, or more general feelings depending on, say, sexuality or amounts of melanin in the skin, that's definitely learned. There is no gay-hating gene.

[Ecks]

and


Requesting that these be made actual tags.

As far as I'm concerned, bigotry and racism are behaviors that aren't, per se, "taught" in the sense that someone is actively trying to convince another that "them there blacks be dumber than dirt" (por exemplo) but in the sense that daddy's using a word that starts with n to describe our neighbor. He seems really nice, but daddy says he's a worthless piece of... Sith? No that's not the word he used...

Anyway, you get my point. It's actually pretty crushing, but shortly after my grandfather died of cancer of the lymph nodes several years ago, my mother told me a story about how she left home and joined the Army to "get the hell away from Hoxie" in her youth, and that, because my grandfather was a bigot, her first encounters with the folk of darker skin were quite shocking to her. I felt crushed inside. Here I was, all of sixteen or seventeen or so myself, feeling guilty because I barely knew my grandfather, and I discover that he either hated, or at the least carried a strong dislike and distrust, of someone who was only ever guilty of being a different color (granted, he was an old fashioned person, and lived his WHOLE life south of the Mason-Dixon line). I stopped feeling guilty. It's horrible, but I couldn't spend my whole life with some corner of my mind thinking about how I never knew my mother's father. I don't think I hate him for that... but I don't feel guilty over never having really known him.

[Tev]

Searing insight edit: It occurred to me that as far as we know humans never marked their territory, in any way, until long after the words for "territory" was invented. Even now we have no clear definition of what it is. We have personal spaces that may be any size, neighborhoods that may or may not be marked by spray paint, internationally acknowledged national boundaries overlapping with cultural and economic ones. Maybe our entire history of oppressing minorities and condemning people who are different in any way is just misdirected frustration because we never learned to pee on trees.
This is actually the best part of this thread. In fact, I do believe I owe you some rep.

Anyway, I'm of the opinion that bigotry and racial prejudices are learned behaviors. Even the concept of people "born evil" is rather silly.

[Archbio]

Race is essentially a social construct.

[bluestarultor]

Requesting that these be made actual tags.

We need sarcasm tags first. There are still some styles we haven't used. I motion we use appropriate colors of text shadow (http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/text-shadow) for any of our intonation tags. With CSS3 gaining support, it should be working in most browsers that matter, and if it doesn't, well, get a better browser. :p

[Viridis]

We need sarcasm tags first. There are still some styles we haven't used. I motion we use appropriate colors of text shadow (http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/text-shadow) for any of our intonation tags. With CSS3 gaining support, it should be working in most browsers that matter, and if it doesn't, well, get a better browser. :p

Use the irony mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark), maybe?

I just learned of this piece of punctuation yesterday.

؟

[bluestarultor]

Use the irony mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark), maybe?

I just learned of this piece of punctuation yesterday.

؟

If I can't type it, I'm not using it. One of the few flaws with Firefox is just how many special characters act as a back button trigger. Also, screw memorizing Unicode.

[PyrosNine]

Bigotry is taught because ideas that we learn on our own can be easily changed, and the things that last are the things that are handed to us by an authority figure, and can be seen as "true" as long as an authority figure is there to support them- of course, once we're away from an authority figure there can be a chance for these 'truths' to be eroded, but once they become a part of a person's identity or method of structuring the world, the person consciously and subconsciously fears the anxiety of losing that bond.

A more important point to simplify this is that people don't like to be proven wrong, and their actions found shameful by conscience or by peer review. Especially as they get older, because realizing that you have spent the last 75 years of your life in glaring, blatant error is one hell of a thing to swallow.

[Premmy]

Race is essentially a social construct.
"essentially" nothing
"Race" Is

White Folks: Hey, all you people of x-vaguely defined range of skin colors look alike
Brown Folks: No, actually sir, we have a wide variety of things that make us different, and if you'd just look you'd se-
WF:NOPE! all alike
BF; Well, in that case, so do you!
WF: No, See, the Irish have Red hair, and the English have bad teeth and-
BF: NOPE! all alike!
WF: Well, we have the guns
BF: FUCK!

[Archbio]

Jesus, this thread.

I... I just like the word essentially.

[Mirai Gen]

Yup.

Not to be a dick, but it pretty much is.

There are few who go out of their way to find problems with the specific group in question without prior teaching but (in my experience) it stems from irrational hatred at a single person that festered to full on hatred.

So generally it's taught but there are, of course, exceptions.

[Premmy]

Answer to Seil-meister's question:

Some People are dicks, either just because, or for some odd-ass reason.

Our society is racist, homophobic, and sexist.

People learn a healthy part of their behavior and personality from their surroundings, including their culture.

Put 'em together and you get racist dicks.

[Amake]

Use the irony mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark), maybe?

I just learned of this piece of punctuation yesterday.

؟ Stupid Wikipedia, % is for irony, Barbelith.com thought of it years ago. It's on everyone's keyboards, just waiting for widespread use.

%But of course a character no one understands or can type is much better.%

[Viridis]

Stupid Wikipedia, % is for irony, Barbelith.com thought of it years ago. It's on everyone's keyboards, just waiting for widespread use.

%But of course a character no one understands or can type is much better.%

First I've heard of that. Strange the Wikipedia article doesn't mention it as an alternative.

I'd just as soon use the percent sign as any other mark.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Stupid Wikipedia, % is for irony, Barbelith.com thought of it years ago. It's on everyone's keyboards, just waiting for widespread use.

%But of course a character no one understands or can type is much better.%

Because A) the inversie question mark was down in the 19th century, making it an easy hundred years before Barbelith giving it easy claim to inventor and B) Barbelith.com is a steaming pile of shit that noone reads!

[Geminex]

Smarty, you disappoint me. I read your name and rushed here, expecting to be dumbfounded by a 3-paragraph, 500-word block of text regarding bigotry, the existence thereof in any capitalist society, the corruption of human nature, the guilt of the education system and how everyone who doesn't let non-british individuals into casinos should be shot, all connected through tenuous logic, idealism and a convoluted, yet compelling style of argument that would've put many revolutionary leaders to shame.

Instead, I get this.

I'm deeply, deeply disappointed.

[Amake]

We've had a designated sarcasm symbol for over a hundred years and no one knows about it? I fear the struggle may be meaningless.

[Premmy]

Smarty, you disappoint me. I read your name and rushed here, expecting to be dumbfounded by a 3-paragraph, 500-word block of text regarding bigotry, the existence thereof in any capitalist society, the corruption of human nature, the guilt of the education system and how everyone who doesn't let non-british individuals into casinos should be shot, all connected through tenuous logic, idealism and a convoluted, yet compelling style of argument that would've put many revolutionary leaders to shame.

Instead, I get this.

I'm deeply, deeply disappointed.

He knows that's my turf, Speaking of turf, you're not wearing the right colors for this neighborhood....
*Draws gun*

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Smarty, you disappoint me. I read your name and rushed here, expecting to be dumbfounded by a 3-paragraph, 500-word block of text regarding bigotry, the existence thereof in any capitalist society, the corruption of human nature, the guilt of the education system and how everyone who doesn't let non-british individuals into casinos should be shot, all connected through tenuous logic, idealism and a convoluted, yet compelling style of argument that would've put many revolutionary leaders to shame.

Instead, I get this.

I'm deeply, deeply disappointed.

Hahahaha, I actually did starting typing that out and had set up quotes from basically everyone in the thread but then thought- No one was going to read it- why bother! So I put that instead.
Consider this Smarty 2.0

[Amake]

He knows that's my turf, Speaking of turf, you're not wearing the right colors for this neighborhood....
*Draws gun* No no, you're supposed to pee on the walls now!

[Premmy]

Straw-Feminism 101, this Gun IS my dick!

[Amake]

Does it shoot pee?

[Premmy]

It's a kind of Pea shooter.

[Geminex]

...

That...

...

Weh?

...

But... how....

??

Dammit Prems

Goddammit.

[Premmy]

Just stand over there and I'll show you, or pee on you, the details are kinda vague.

[Amake]

As long as some cigar-shaped object spooges some form of identifying or noticeable matter on or in something or someone that concludes the encounter to someone's satisfaction. . .

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everything mankind has ever produced is inherentely phallic. EVERYTHING.

[Premmy]

I would like to take this opportunity to point out that everything mankind has ever produced is inherentely phallic. EVERYTHING.

COINCIDENCE? I think not!

[Amake]

Not that I don't want to sit here and talk about penis all day, but I have a different theory: That our bridges, towers, rocketships and maybe even guns symbolizes our desire to reach out and touch that which isn't us. Look at them Freudian shapes as arms rather than dongs.

[Marc v4.0]

Not that I don't want to sit here and talk about penis all day, but I have a different theory: That our bridges, towers, rocketships and maybe even guns symbolizes our desire to reach out and touch that which isn't us.

...with our penises

[Satan's Onion]

Not that I don't want to sit here and talk about penis all day, but I have a different theory: That our bridges, towers, rocketships and maybe even guns symbolizes our desire to reach out and touch that which isn't us. Look at them Freudian shapes as arms rather than dongs.

So...it's like we're poking the Universe with the fingers of our minds.

...Whoa. Deep.

[Premmy]

You callin' me a dick-head?

[Geminex]

I don't think so, but we might as well...

Dickhead.

And my blathering was less directed at the fact that only a few posts before you made that horrible, ABOMINABLE pun we were having a perfectly normal discussion. Then Smarty posted, then I posted, then you threatened me, then IQ missed an opportunity for a "WEST SIDE!" reference, then you two posted again. Then you made a "pea-shooter" pun.

I don't like puns.

dick-head.

[Seil]

I started this thread in the hopes that it would be nurtured by thoughtful arguments, philosophical justifications and researched facts - now we're talking about pee shooters. This thread will grow, and be nurtured by your posts into the tree of bigotry, which, incidentally, also goes by several other names:

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u59/Poetisch/UglyTree.jpg

[Premmy]

Honestly, most dorks(read: All of you) Can't seem to have a real discussion about racism beyond " Racism is bad, M'kay?" without going into any further detail about why, or the real root causes.

Discussing why individuals are dicks is somewhat pointless in these discussions, so me making an overly serious long-ass post would have been pointless, even more so because people would have responded with anger due to refusal to understand, so, Dick puns are more suitable to discussion on serious topics around here, just look at the feminisim thread, it STARTED out bad and only got worse.

[Amake]

We have discovered a root cause of racism dating to prehistoric times (http://forum.nuklearpower.com/showpost.php?p=1018896&postcount=2), what more do you want? ^_^

[Azisien]

Hey racism isn't always bad! Chris Rock would only have like 10% of his jokes if racism didn't exist. And Chris Rock is totally worth hundreds of years of both overt and subtle oppression!

[Premmy]

It's not about saying racism is good or bad. It's saying something after that.

[Azisien]

It's not good when I get asked things like "why" because you end up with big convoluted posts. I'm actually interested to hear what you have to say though, Prem. My problem is of course that you'd label any concern/disagreement I have with 'anger due to refusal to understand.' Which actually sounds kind of condescending anyway, like you would be the ultimate purveyor of knowledge and we merely nod because you are correct.

That being said, racism probably falls under a broader umbrella of multiculturalism in general, and whether that is even possible. Is it? Yeah. Could our generation accomplish it? Almost definitely not. Canada's supposed to be "multicultural" but I think we struggle with it. We still have our own regional values we advertantly or inadvertantly force onto others and I think that's actually natural. If I up and moved to somewhere exotic I would have to swallow whatever regional customs/values that place has. I don't really know where to proceed from there.

[01d55]

http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/24/quoted-wired-magazine-on-how-to-raise-racist-kids/
Step One: Don’t talk about race. Don’t point out skin color. Be “color blind.”

Step Two: Actually, that’s it. There is no Step Two.

Congratulations! Your children are well on their way to believing that <insert your ethnicity here> is better than everybody else.

There is, of course, an equally simple way of raising kids to be not racist.

There's a set of rules that governs what kind of results you get from a given kind of nurture, and those rules constitute nature.

NATURE VS. NUTURE DEBATE RESOLVED.

[Premmy]

It's not good when I get asked things like "why" because you end up with big convoluted posts.

Well, that's because Racism is a big, convoluted issue, That's just something that has to be dealt with if you want to get involved.

I'm actually interested to hear what you have to say though, Prem. My problem is of course that you'd label any concern/disagreement I have with 'anger due to refusal to understand.'
I'm willing to listen to anything somone has to say, if they're willing to actually listen. These are complicated issues, and a lot of times, people have their feelings hurt by the simple matter of what's being talked about. I'll listen to things I don't want to hear if people will listen to things THEY don't want to hear.

I don't think so, but we might as well...

Dickhead.

And my blathering was less directed at the fact that only a few posts before you made that horrible, ABOMINABLE pun we were having a perfectly normal discussion. Then Smarty posted, then I posted, then you threatened me, then IQ missed an opportunity for a "WEST SIDE!" reference, then you two posted again. Then you made a "pea-shooter" pun.

I don't like puns.

dick-head.
See, now you're making me explain the pun:

IQ brought up Phallic objects as Extensions of our psyche, to which SO posted
So...it's like we're poking the Universe with the fingers of our minds.

...Whoa. Deep.

So I made the "Dick-Head" joke in reference to the phallic objects being extensions of the mind, thus, dicks in the head, thus Dick-head.

[Ecks]

Premonitions Post

several posts later...

Derailed into dick jokes

Why am I not surprised?

[Premmy]

EVERY converation is about my dick, most people just don't realize it until I point it out to them.