Is Bigotry Taught?

[Seil]

In this thread, I was wondering about psychopathic behavior. 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.

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. This school is trying to teach younger generations tolerance of homosexuality, and more about sexuality in general.

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]

Originally Posted by Seil

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]

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

Originally Posted by Azisien

-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.