Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005 Status: offline
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Let's square up on definitions quickly. Racist means someone proud of their race, nothing more except possibly to live up to the ideals of one's forefathers. Prejudice is expecting a certain attitude or whatever from someone based on their race, and more prevalently in the US, skin color. Bigotry is thinking one is superior due to their heritage, and for no other reason. These may not be excatly according to Webster, but they are within the following text. Now I was born and bred racist and prejudiced, but not bigoted. The racist part was not a big thing, but since I had some warriors in my heritage, they expected me to go into the military, and so forth. I hope I wasn't too much of a disappointment. The prejudice part was unlike anyone would get today, see it was not chiefly white/black. It was don't trust Italins with certain things, French, Ukrainians. Things like that. It was not a totally black/white thing at all. In fact neighborhoods were fairly segregated when I was young and back then I rarely saw any Black people. So in some of my time, in introspection I have come up with a theory. Well a proposed theory, on why it is so hard for some to give up on the bad aspects of racism, prejudice and bigotry. Because it involves family. This is hard to word. The "keep away" instinct is common to many animals. As they, in the wild, based on their instinct, run away from us, we run away from each other. Take the case of the racially segregated comunities of the past, there could still be fueds. Remember Romeo and Juliet ? How about the Hatfields and the McCoys. You should be able to visualise a Hatfield saying about his daughter "I would rather see her marry a ______ than a lowdown McCoy". From where do such attitudes spawn ? Is it natural to have an aversion to one of another race just because they are different ? Or did something happen in the past ? Is it a grudge ? Or is it more like schools (sp-skoals ?) of fish, where there is simply a natural instinct to be with one's "own kind". Even if that's so, do the fish attack each other (other than to eat them) ? I mean fish seem to have the ultimate peace plan, if you can't swallow it, leave it alone. Maybe part of my point is also that you can't really unlearn anything, but you can learn beyond it. We have learned beyond our fear of fire and the weather. Most societies have moved beyond the fear of the suprnatural. moved beyond the fear learned beyond the fear listen to myself ! Is fear the root of it all ? T
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