Saturday, April 28, 2007

Racism and Evolution

Last night I had a disturbing and disheartening encounter with a black teenager. I'm sure he was trying to "impress" the girl he was with, but the whole experience has left me with a nagging question:

What if racism is a response to evolutionary competition? In other words, we are all competing for limited resources-- and the scarcity of these resources brings people into conflict. What if racism allows people to psychologically dehumanize their competition, so they can be emotionally free/capable of doing horrible things to other human beings in order to "win the prize?"

No comments: