Pre-European Racism

[BitVyper]

out of a part of the human psyche

Pretty much all animals ever are at the very least naturally suspicious of things that are different. Lots of people have racist pets.

[Archbio]

He's exaggerating a bit, but the point holds true.

I was picking at the example, not the point, and the example is a little more wrong than an exaggeration, it does seem to me!

Pretty much all animals ever are at the very least naturally suspicious of things that are different.

Look at it this way... can every derivation of this sort of thought in contemporary society be called racism following any definition of the term? Evidently not. When the target of the othering is a target because of their sex or gender (and similar points of identity), per example, it's obvious that the term racism is very inappropriate. Yet it proceeds from the same things referred to here.

A definition that is that broad needs to make those exceptions. So you're defining racism as all of the 'othering' behaviors, thoughts, institutions that occurs not fully within a single identifiable race, regardless if a proper concept of 'race' is a factor or not. I don't think it's a very useful definition, but I'm not sure if my meaning is clear.

[The Wizard Who Did It]

Well there's two ways to argue this.

One is that racism is an extension of tribalism. Tribalism is the habit of people to form groupings in order to survive, mate, and live. Usually it is made up of a group of familiars, or people that they try to pretend are familiars. The unfortunate side effect of making an "in" group is that it makes an "out" group. When the "in/out" distinction is race, it's racism. Although really, tribalism extends all the way from nationality to your book club. It just so happens that race is dependent on physical characteristics, making it much easier to make distinctions between "tribes".

Basically, by that understanding, racism has existed since forever.

And then there's the creation of racism as a negative attribute. Racism as a word, with the connotation of reflecting poorly on one's character as apposed to being natural and obvious.

Arguing on when that concept originated would be interesting.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Blues

There's also this funny thing about how people define race. In the absence of widely variant skin color, people go so far as to use the spacing between the eyes and quality of skin tone and such to determine race. That's what some tribes do in South America, so two people of one race under their definition can have a child of another. Just an interesting tidbit.

This more brings up the question of how a race is even defined. When does a chinese stop becoming a chinese, and is instead korean? Is all of asia one race (hint: probably not)? How fine a distinction must there be between two people before attitudes taken constitute as racist?

[katiuska]

Originally Posted by The Wizard Who Did It

This more brings up the question of how a race is even defined. When does a chinese stop becoming a chinese, and is instead korean? Is all of asia one race (hint: probably not)? How fine a distinction must there be between two people before attitudes taken constitute as racist?

It's... really sketchy. In fact, it's becoming a widely-accepted idea in sciences that there's no such thing, in any real biological/genetic sense. To the extent that we can even try to separate people into clear racial categories, there's still more genetic variation within groups than between them.

It's easiest to think of in terms of ethnicity, which in the roughest sense is anything by which people base cultural identities (region, history, appearance, belief systems, etc).

[Martyr]

Who's racist against Asians anyway?

What do/did they do?

[Kepor]

During WWII, the Japanese invaded mainland China, and killed, imprisoned, or displaced thousands (millions?) of Chinese. They haven't forgotten, and that animosity is still simmering today.

During WWII, Japan preemptively bombed Pearl Harbor, in an attempt to cripple the US Navy forces in the Pacific. Although Japan and the US forged close ties during the Cold War, and is today one of America's largest trading partners, there are still people who remember Japan unfavorably.

China is the largest country by population in the world, and with their recent economic growth, they are slowly emerging onto the world stage. Many in the Western world view them as a threat and destabilizing force.

However, prejudice doesn't really need a justification; the only requirements is a defining factor of groups and an "us vs. them" mentality.

[TheSparrow]

I think it was Sam Rayburn who said:

"If we woke up tomorrow and everyone was the same race, creed and religion, by lunch we would figure out something new to hate in each other."