Ok, sure, Will is right that in-group/out-group bias is pretty darn innate. What is *learned* is how to label people as members of the in-group or out-group. "Race" was invented as a way to say "Ok, Brits, French, Dutch, Swedes, etc... we can be an in-group together and enslave all of the residents of the continent of Africa because they…
Ok, sure, Will is right that in-group/out-group bias is pretty darn innate. What is *learned* is how to label people as members of the in-group or out-group. "Race" was invented as a way to say "Ok, Brits, French, Dutch, Swedes, etc... we can be an in-group together and enslave all of the residents of the continent of Africa because they're all a single, inferior out-group we'll call 'black.'" Conveniently, I have a three-year-old. He can see that different people have different skin colors, but he hasn't learned to label people by race yet (and hopefully I'm doing an okay job of teaching him that they're all his "in-group" because they're all human beings). Racism- bigotry and bias based on the social construct of race--has to be learned because race was made up. Humans learn, then go unlearn things all the time. Think of all the people who "learned" that the sun went around the Earth, then had to unlearn it.
Well, humans spent a few hundred thousand years in small tribes where an outsider was a potentially fatal threat. Plenty of time for the behavior to become part of our genetics.
But we are not enthralled to our behavior genetics.
Exactly. There is a difference between in-group bias and bigotry. That's the point I was trying to drive home in this conversation. A bias towards "your tribe" (by whatever measure that's defined) does not automatically equal hatred for another.
This stuff is fascinating to me. I've seen Chinese from completely different parts of the world meet each other, usually in the company of non-Chinese; there comes a moment when they speak directly to each other, usually in Mandarin, and go through the quick protocols that amount to "how do I address you," age, status, etc.
Their faces completely change at this moment. Like putting on a mask.
I come from two families with roots deep in New York Jewish culture. I was raised Episcopalian (it didn't take) and only met a few of my, by then, elderly relatives. My grandmothers were not observant. Yet get me around northeastern Jews and the sense of "belonging" is intense. Yet I have never been in a synagogue and I only understand Yiddish because I speak German.
"Will is right that in-group/out-group bias is pretty darn innate"
Yeah, exactly. I agreed with Will about this. The point I was trying to drive home with him is that there's a difference between in-group bias and bigotry. As I said to somebody else here, there's a difference between feeling a certain degree of solidarity with somebody because they share certain traits with you, and believing somebody to be inferior or to possess undesirable characteristics because they possess certain traits that are different to yours.
The former is, let's say, as close to innate as makes no difference. But the latter is learned. Which is why the traits we've used to characterise the "undesirables" throughout history have changed in all kinds of ways. And now, many of them would seem absolutely ridiculous to us. My favourite example of this is phrenology.
“If you asked [an Englishman] to situate himself within the rapidly expanding borders of the known world, he would probably identify himself, first and most naturally, as an Englishman. If that category proved too narrow – if, say, he needed to describe what it was he had in common with the French and the Dutch that he did not share with Ottomans or Africans – he would almost certainly call himself a Christian instead.
That religious identity was crucial for the development of the English slave trade – and eventually for the development of racial whiteness. In the early 17th century, plantation owners in the West Indies and in the American colonies largely depended on the labour of European indentured servants. These servants were considered chattel and were often treated brutally – the conditions on Barbados, England’s wealthiest colony, were notorious – but they were fortunate in at least one respect: because they were Christian, by law they could not be held in lifetime captivity unless they were criminals or prisoners of war.
Africans enjoyed no such privilege. They were understood to be infidels, and thus the “perpetual enemies” of Christian nations, which made it legal to hold them as slaves. By 1640 or so, the rough treatment of indentured servants had started to diminish the supply of Europeans willing to work on the sugar and tobacco plantations, and so the colonists looked increasingly to slavery, and the Atlantic-sized loophole that enabled it, to keep their fantastically profitable operations supplied with labour.“
Skin color may have played a part, but it wasn't the main belief that drove the switch from white indentured to black enslaved labor. Whether one was a Christian was the key in-group belief that bound "whites" together. Skin color privilege was afterward politicized and codified into law by granting privileges to whites that elevated them above blacks, etc. And that's when the "I'm better than you because I'm white” overt racism began.
Ok, sure, Will is right that in-group/out-group bias is pretty darn innate. What is *learned* is how to label people as members of the in-group or out-group. "Race" was invented as a way to say "Ok, Brits, French, Dutch, Swedes, etc... we can be an in-group together and enslave all of the residents of the continent of Africa because they're all a single, inferior out-group we'll call 'black.'" Conveniently, I have a three-year-old. He can see that different people have different skin colors, but he hasn't learned to label people by race yet (and hopefully I'm doing an okay job of teaching him that they're all his "in-group" because they're all human beings). Racism- bigotry and bias based on the social construct of race--has to be learned because race was made up. Humans learn, then go unlearn things all the time. Think of all the people who "learned" that the sun went around the Earth, then had to unlearn it.
Well, humans spent a few hundred thousand years in small tribes where an outsider was a potentially fatal threat. Plenty of time for the behavior to become part of our genetics.
But we are not enthralled to our behavior genetics.
Exactly. There is a difference between in-group bias and bigotry. That's the point I was trying to drive home in this conversation. A bias towards "your tribe" (by whatever measure that's defined) does not automatically equal hatred for another.
This stuff is fascinating to me. I've seen Chinese from completely different parts of the world meet each other, usually in the company of non-Chinese; there comes a moment when they speak directly to each other, usually in Mandarin, and go through the quick protocols that amount to "how do I address you," age, status, etc.
Their faces completely change at this moment. Like putting on a mask.
I come from two families with roots deep in New York Jewish culture. I was raised Episcopalian (it didn't take) and only met a few of my, by then, elderly relatives. My grandmothers were not observant. Yet get me around northeastern Jews and the sense of "belonging" is intense. Yet I have never been in a synagogue and I only understand Yiddish because I speak German.
"Will is right that in-group/out-group bias is pretty darn innate"
Yeah, exactly. I agreed with Will about this. The point I was trying to drive home with him is that there's a difference between in-group bias and bigotry. As I said to somebody else here, there's a difference between feeling a certain degree of solidarity with somebody because they share certain traits with you, and believing somebody to be inferior or to possess undesirable characteristics because they possess certain traits that are different to yours.
The former is, let's say, as close to innate as makes no difference. But the latter is learned. Which is why the traits we've used to characterise the "undesirables" throughout history have changed in all kinds of ways. And now, many of them would seem absolutely ridiculous to us. My favourite example of this is phrenology.
Actually, if you had read the article Steve linked to: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-of-whiteness-long-history-dangerous-idea, you would have discovered that skin color was not the main differentiator. It was religion.
“If you asked [an Englishman] to situate himself within the rapidly expanding borders of the known world, he would probably identify himself, first and most naturally, as an Englishman. If that category proved too narrow – if, say, he needed to describe what it was he had in common with the French and the Dutch that he did not share with Ottomans or Africans – he would almost certainly call himself a Christian instead.
That religious identity was crucial for the development of the English slave trade – and eventually for the development of racial whiteness. In the early 17th century, plantation owners in the West Indies and in the American colonies largely depended on the labour of European indentured servants. These servants were considered chattel and were often treated brutally – the conditions on Barbados, England’s wealthiest colony, were notorious – but they were fortunate in at least one respect: because they were Christian, by law they could not be held in lifetime captivity unless they were criminals or prisoners of war.
Africans enjoyed no such privilege. They were understood to be infidels, and thus the “perpetual enemies” of Christian nations, which made it legal to hold them as slaves. By 1640 or so, the rough treatment of indentured servants had started to diminish the supply of Europeans willing to work on the sugar and tobacco plantations, and so the colonists looked increasingly to slavery, and the Atlantic-sized loophole that enabled it, to keep their fantastically profitable operations supplied with labour.“
Skin color may have played a part, but it wasn't the main belief that drove the switch from white indentured to black enslaved labor. Whether one was a Christian was the key in-group belief that bound "whites" together. Skin color privilege was afterward politicized and codified into law by granting privileges to whites that elevated them above blacks, etc. And that's when the "I'm better than you because I'm white” overt racism began.