Mod warning: if this gets stupid or flamey, I'm locking it. Consider yourselves all warned.
About your question, consider it this way; your dog didn't choose to be a dog, but it's still a dog. No matter what, your dog is not going to graduate from college. To an (average) racist, it's the same way. It's nothing to do with whether someone chose to be anything; it's that they believe that people of a certain race are automatically inferior due to the inherent nature of that race.
A brighter future for a darker age.Because it's what they learned growing up. Many of people's core beliefs are defined at a young age by those who raise the. Unlearning such beliefs tends to be rather difficult since, one, they've been with you longer than you can remember, and two, humans in general prefer to extreme before wrong.
The emotions of others can seem like such well guarded mysteries, people 8egin to 8elieve that's how their own emotions should 8e treated.Fear too, I guess. I was scared of black people as a child for reasons I don't know. I guess their uh... dark color scared me? I don't know. I tried to not act any different towards black people though and knew my fear was stupid and irrational. I'm ashamed to admit that I did avoid confrontations with black people sometimes though...
There's some thought that a big part of western racism developed to help keep the slave trade in the Americas morally acceptable. Some people believe that races are not just pre-packaged sets of phenotypes, but part of the human race's development into different species.
This is very silly, but if you make the right set of assumptions, makes sense.
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.It's also part of human nature. Not racism, per se, but rather, fear of the Other, whichever that is. Having a common enemy is one of the greatest ways for a tribal culture to have cohesion - remember, for a large part of human history, humans formed societies around the clan, and if they didn't stand together, they would die apart.
I do not mean to excuse racism. It's vile, and I condemn it wholeheartedly. I merely say this to attempt to explain why racism exists in the hearts of mankind.
Everyone has prejudice of some kind. Some are just socially acceptable, while others are not.
Read my stories!To me, if a racist person was open-minded enough to realize the points made here, they wouldn't be racist. But my guess on how a person becomes racist depends on the time they grew up, or how they grow up. I know not everyone thinks the same way their parents do, but if they never experience something that contradicts what their parents say, they may continue to believe it themselves.
My PM box is always open to anyone who wants to talk/vent.@ Mr AHR: Are you trying to imply that everyone's pretty much as bad as racists but racists are just unfairly singled out by society as bad? Because that's how your post reads, and if that's the intent, then... wow.
edited 19th Apr '12 6:53:14 PM by ALibrarianofBabel
Never build a character piecemeal out of tropes.I imagine that everyone has prejudices. But a lot of people still treat all people fairly despite those prejudices.
Of course, there are acceptable targets as judged by society also, deplorable though that may be.
But there are prejudices and prejudices. And racism's probably the one that has caused the most pain throughout human history, unless you count religious persecution.
Likes many underrated webcomicsAnd "religious persecution" can be seen as a form of racism depending on how you define a "race"- for example, I've been told that Jews are just people who believe in Judaism, hence why there are "black Jews". If that's the case than antisemitism can been both religious persecution (because it's based on religion) and racism at the same time.
The people of Lilliput fought over the correct way to crack open eggs. All prejudices are silly and potentially harmful, but we're all taught racism is particularly bad.
Racism is just the prejudice that's manifested as the most powerful force for causing harm and has been the basis for several economies.
Slavery was not always an institution associated with race, and that's the main argument for the terrors of racism over other prejudices.
The American Revolution was fought over legislative prejudice, because Parliment for the most part thought the provincial colonists weren't entitled to things those colonists felt they were.
Racism is bad, but it's not inherently evil, no more so than any other part of human nature. Good and Bad are values assigned more or less solely in a cultural context.
Charlie Tunoku is a lover and a fighter.![]()
I'd just call it bigotry, unless (like anti-Semitism or Islamophobia...actually, do people actually use the latter? It seems like a kind of clumsy term that we can think of a less cheesy word for) it has a term for it that is already used.
One thing to keep in mind about racism is that there's two ways to use the term.
The technical one is comes down to "based on race". For instance, looking at someone with a medium brown skin tone and presuming their heritage is Middle Eastern would be "racist" given the technical definition of the term. Based on race, you have reached that concept or conclusion. This definition of racism isn't inherently bad, depending on context, because in a segregated world some things can be inferred from race. Globalisation has put a dent in that perspective though, because now race is less and less an indicator of where someone may come from or the cultural upbringing they may have had. Given the rise of colonial racism over the past few hundred years, efforts to dissipate it and globalisation, it's no surprise that this definition holds less and less relevance.
In a more colloquial sense, racism refers to "discrimination based on race", the idea that a quality of a person may be inferred from their racial heritage. While the technical terminology in the paragraph above is permissible in some cases and certainly was before the beginning of globalisation, this is the insidious one. Most of us probably think of the KKK or skinheads when we think of racial discrimination against people of colour, but the fact of the matter is that racism can be almost invisible. One good example is a 19th century find of North African swords. They were straight-bladed, so archaeologists at the time assumed they were designs adapted from the influence of medieval Europeans. The implication of this is "Africans could not have devised good sword designs". So while the idea of North Africans being influenced by medieval European sword designs is worth consideration, jumping to that conclusion or casting aside the possibility that Africans might be responsible for some good swords was a racist presumption.
Especially today, most racism isn't especially active. Sure, you get particular groups seeking to tread on people of colour, but the worst racism will always be implicit rather than out in the open. For instance, there's nothing technically preventing a black woman from being one of the world's wealthiest individuals, but you'll find that the wealthiest individuals in the world are white men. You don't have to actively discriminate to be racist, and getting rid of racism isn't a matter of criticising racists alone, but looking inward and thinking about assumptions, presumptions and systematic elements that prevent people of colour from advancing where a white person might succeed for no reason. A black guy cursing you out for being white might be racist, for instance, but that's just one asshole behaving badly. In the West, people of colour are dealing with systems that elevate white people above others. It's far removed from the days when black people had to sit at the back of the bus, but it's still a state of affairs that enacts economic and social violence against non-whites.
Essentially, no-one "chooses" to be racist, especially in a modern context where being called racist is one of the worst criticisms one can receive. Instead, people hold beliefs or feelings that have been passed on to them on a fundamental level. A lot of people are racist in some way or another and, hell, I'm probably racist in a few ways I don't even realise. When someone is racist on the basis of unchosen presumption, I don't think they should be a target for derision or criticism, but they should be seen as an opportunity to further a good cause by altering their perspective on things and raising their awareness of how things actually work.
Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — WatchWhat Farseer said, though probably in less plain terms and with more ranting. And a What Would You Do clip:
@Hungry Joe: No, two things being "things people do" doesn't magically make them equally good/bad. Are you really going to argue that, for example, racism isn't any worse than altruism?
Never build a character piecemeal out of tropes.

I'm trying to understand some things about the way racists think, but I find the idea of it just so damn incomprehensible.
For instance, have white supremacists ever considered the fact that non-white, I dunno, never actually chose to be born into whatever race they were born into? What's their excuse for discriminating on the basis of that?
A fistful of me.