Is it racism?

[Professor S]

The sad fact is that racism in some shape or form will always exist as it is a natural function of our brains. Before you start yelling, hear me out.

Your brain cannot possibly categorize every person you meet or see in life individually. The brain simply cannot handle such a load. Therefore you brain must do something called Social Stereotyping. This allows you to handle the fact that there are 6 billion people in the world that are not the same by breaking them down into categories determined by looks, social status or both.

You cannot stop this, as much as you cannot stop you Fight or Flight response or your urge to remove your hand from a hot burner. It is natural.

What we have to start to do is realize that this happens and understand how to use it in a benign fashion for acceptance rather than fear and xenophobia. Ignoring racism/social stereotyping or dismissing it altogether does more harm than good.

Men and women are different, blacks and whites are different and so on and so forth. We should accept and embrace these differences if we are ever going to stop malevolent racism.