Everyone’s Racist - Georgia Tech College of Sciences

Everyone’s Racist - Georgia Tech College of Sciences

That is completely obvious, but nobody ever really acknowledges it.

As the study notes:

"There’s one idea that people tend to associate black people with violence, women with weakness, or older people with forgetfulness — because they are prejudiced. But there’s another possibility that what’s in your head is not you, it’s the culture around you.”

We are taught from childhood that "my group is better than your group," and we internalize that mentality. In adulthood it particularly shows up in racial or gender relations because the physical differences between races and sexes are generally more evident than other differences between groups, and thus divide us more distinctly.

Inherent in every culture I've ever looked at is the "superiority assumption." Remember back in school when you offered those generalizations about students from other schools. Remember how you were cheering because you were the best? Those learned behaviors are the same as racism: they involve an assumption of a differentiation between specific individuals based on differences, real or imagined, between groups. And don't think this is unique to North America. I traveled to just about every country in the civilized world, and a few that were mainly uncivilized, and I invariably faced assumptions that I would behave or think a certain (usually undesirable) way because I was an American. And that was from the educated classes.

Of course I had a tremendous advantage over victims of real prejudice. I could always go back home, or someplace where I seemed to blend in. I thus ceased to be part of the "other" group.