On Racism

The universal conception of racism seems to explain it as stemming merely from extreme bigotry, from one group thinking they are better than another and acting on it. But while that certainly seems to have been the case in the past, and while bigotry is certainly still a large part of racism, it seems to me that in South Africa at least the actual causes are far more numerous and complex.

At its most basic level, the universal cause of racism, along with all other forms of prejudice and discrimination, is difference. In this case, difference of physical appearance certainly plays something of a part, but I personally would argue that differences of language, culture and worldview are far more important.

Off the top of my head, I can find three pieces of evidence to support this:

Firstly, in certain parts of South Africa, in certain social groups, the old Afrikaner/Soutie animosity is still alive - not quite as flagrant, as vicious or as strongly felt as typical European/African racism, but nonetheless quite present. Now, although it's probably theoretically possible to distinguish someone of Afrikaner descent from someone of English descent, physical appearance is for all intents practically useless in this particular vendetta.

Secondly, the phenomenon of self-titled "coconuts" (or, recently, "Oreos"), people of African descent with a stereotypically "white" western upbringing, being readily accepted into normally prejudiced societies or groups, shows that behaviour and culture play a large part in racial discrimination.

Finally, the same depression is apparent in non-racial contexts. The one that immediately springs to mind is the classic jock/nerd rivalry, but there are many others to be found with a moment's thought.

What does cause racism then? Beyond the simple description of "differences" mentioned above?

Although I'm certainly not a sociologist, my best bet is that it's a fairly simple process, something like the following:

You have two types of people, culturally speaking (and, coincidentally, racially speaking), in the same environment. By the natural ebb and flow of social situations, they will naturally form into groups. But a person of one type - for the sake of political correctness, let's call them Venusians - is going have trouble fitting into a group with the other type of person, whom we shall call the Neptunians (Political correctness is silly enough without me having to use the word "Martians").

It's not that they would deliberately ostracize him. It's just that he wouldn't fit in. He wouldn't be able to relate to them. They way they prioritise flord over fneerp, the fact that other people's klud doesn't seem to matter to them... And the language barrier would always be a problem. Technically he can speak Neptunian, but they can't seriously expect him to learn all nine tenses. They can all speak Venusian, but they can't pronounce their zaks right and he has to spend an extra ten seconds trying to understand everything they say.

Likewise for a Neptunian trying to fit into a Venusian group. They don't seem to care about flord at all, but they're absolutely obsessed with fneerp and they can get really uptight about their klud. And then there's the language barrier again.

It's nothing deliberate or malicious, but it's a fact of life that you're going to get two groups. Perhaps there may be more groups, but they will be visible as two supergroups, Venusians and Neptunians. And it's a fact of sociology that if you have two groups competing for resources, there will be animosity. It's the way we're programmed.

Thus far, we have enough to explain Afrikaner/Soutie animosity. But what about the bigotry, and the bigoted kind of racism?

So we have two groups beginning to develop a fair amount of mutual animosity. But one group is more powerful than the other - not intrinsically, but they have better technology. It's a short leap from "We don't like them" plus "We have power over them" to "We're better than them." Human nature again, I'm afraid.

So racism, as far as I can tell, doesn't start out with bigotry. Bigotry is a cross between a symptom and a stage of development of racism, but the real origin is far more simple and, depressingly, more a matter of human nature than of racists being intrinsically bad people.

Typically, this is where I would unveil my four-week plan for eliminating racism worldwide, but unfortunately I don't have one, and I'm not sure there is a simple solution, never mind one a medical student with a blog could figure out. Hopefully, though, this has been at least a little enlightening for someone.