Nature Vs. Nurture; Racism

Racism. It’s all around us. But how do people end up with the viewpoint that some people are better than others based on their ethnic backgrounds? Or that, based on the color of one’s skin, certain things are true about certain people? Do people develop these beliefs on their own - are they naturally this way? Or could it be something instilled in them by their parents and others around them - are they raised that way? It goes into the old psychology debate, Nature vs. Nurture. Nature vs. Nurture asks what most impacts the development of the human psyche - hereditary or one’s environment. It’s apparent that you share certain things with your parents through DNA – you might have your mom’s long eyelashes, or your dad’s big feet. But where could you have gotten your love for writing or your extreme distaste for sports? That is what Nature vs. Nurture delves into. The view that humans acquire almost all of their behavioral traits from "nurture" is known as tabula rasa (or "blank slate"). Pretty much, it says that humans are, yeah, born with their own physical appearances, but they are still blank to any sort of predetermined views or ideas. It’s only when someone is introduced to certain opinions, like a love or a hate for certain things, that they begin to believe in any certain way. Does that not make sense? Do you honestly believe that you could have been born to hate or love everything you hate or love, or do you think that you parents may have had something to do with it? Had your father been a famous country music star, would you still hate country music? Everyone is, in some way or another, a product of their surroundings. Think about it. The perspective that humans were born with the instinct to hate races different from themselves (anything alien at all, really) could be evolutionarily possible, however. There’s probably some sort of evolutionary paranoia when it comes to something different (hey, in caves, humans had to be prepared for anything.) It’s sad to admit, but all humans, almost without exception, fear things that they don’t quite know or understand. In an ideal world, that fear would have been overcome, but it’s all a process in growth. It’s all merely physical; humans still need to get past it. There is research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which reports that skin color is less important than originally thought by scientists and psychologists. The research suggests that humans' apparent tendency towards noticing someone's skin color - which many scientists previously thought was simply natural and unavoidable – is, in actuality, a changeable feature of brain mechanisms that came about for an entirely different purpose: to detect shifting coalitions and alliances. Race just isn't a necessary factor anymore. Most cutting-edge geneticists and theorists discount race as much of a factor in almost everything. The physical difference between “races” is a whopping .02 percent, with something like 90 percent of that

.02 percent being merely cosmetic. Races just don't exist, humans make them exist. People condemn themselves. It’s comes back to the self-fulfilling prophecy. The self-fulfilling prophecy directly or indirectly, in the end, causes itself to become true. In other words, an idea declared as truth when it is actually false may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy. If it wasn’t true before, the person, through belief in it, will make it true. If an African American child sees and is told all of this life that he should grow up to be a rap star, or that grades don’t matter because he has no future, what do you think will happen? At the same time, if he’s shown and told that he is a perfectly good person, and that he can be anything he wants to be, what else could be the outcome? Sure, he could be a rap star or a high school dropout if he still wanted to (as could any of us), but he might also be a lawyer, or even the president of the United States. Anything is possible, you know, within one’s own personal abilities and disabilities. Still, no one race is particularly abler than another. When you get down to it, genetically, all humans are just the same (unless .02 percent honestly means that much to you). So, any genetic basis for racism would be merely an evolutionary protective paranoia – common to all cultures. This, yes, opens the possibility that “racism” of some sort has been evolutionary, or instinctive in some way. It is actually a certainty. This, however, is not to be interpreted that an ongoing hate or fear, especially in this day in age, is accountable, but rather presents an understanding for some sort of initial hate or fear. Scientist Robert Kurzban from the University of California at Santa Barbara has been doing extensive studies on such topics. He reported to the BBC that, “Racism has to do with categorizing someone as a member of a certain race or group; if you can prevent the categorization in the first place then that ought to prevent... stereotypes.” Its actually been found that it took only four minutes to drastically alter a persons' lifetime experiences of race when placed in “an alternate social world.” Back in Europe’s “Age of Exploration,” Africa was already known to the Western world as the “dark continent,” because it was an unexplored and believed-to-be savage and untamed area populated only by heathens. Europeans began to explore this “dark continent,” both out of curiosity, and in search for newer and more convenient trade routes. Neither race of people had any initial understanding of the other, so when finally face to face, both the native Africans and Europeans had the same reactions to each other: fear. It’s only to be expected; what were the natives to think of these alien light-faced people, come to their home out of seemingly nowhere, changing their belief systems (in hope to spread Christianity) and their ways of life? At the same time, what were the explorers, who had little to no

experience with these people (still almost new to them, although there had been previous racial mixing with African people in parts of their society) supposed to think about these people? Humans are quick to judge, quick to make opinions and viewpoints on things they are faced with. Fear and misunderstanding resulted in a bad relationship between different sorts of people from the get-go.