Is Bigotry Taught?

[Ecks]

Originally Posted by Lev

[fact]
and
[/fact]

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]

Originally Posted by Invisible Queen

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]

Originally Posted by EckScizor

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 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]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

We need sarcasm tags first. There are still some styles we haven't used. I motion we use appropriate colors of 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, maybe?

I just learned of this piece of punctuation yesterday.

؟

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Viridis

Use the 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]

Originally Posted by Archbio

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.