How did discrimination become normalized?

With a risk of attracting long biased rants, I feel that it's important to analyze and learn to prevent.

 

I feel it is biologically wired into us. It's not so much a question of how discrimination is the norm, but rather how long it will take us to evolve past it.

 

Discrimination has always been the norm. In patriarchal societies, women were relegated to the roles of mothers and home makers, although the definition of that is somewhat different to ours. In pre-modern societies, women had to work in the fields alongside men, but there were roles largely reserved for men - soldiers, kandowners and so on.

As to racial discrimination, that's a bit more difficult. Pogroms against Jews were not uncommon, but most people in medieval times rarely travelled far from their village and would almost never encounter people different to themselves.

Cities like Rome and Constantinople were melting pots where many foreigners met, but there were occasional massacres of particular racial groups.

Religious discrimination probably found its roots in various splits in the Christian church - Catholic/Orthodoc and Catholic/Protestant, as well as the Christian/Muslim conflcits dating from around the 9th century.

In Japan, Christians were expelled at the start of the 17th century, and those who remained behind were forced to convert. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 16th century by the Jesuits and Francis Xavier. There have also been tensions between the indigenous Shinto religion and the foreign Buddhist religion.

 

The biggest problem with discrimination, and the reason why I think it would be very hard to eradicate, is that to a certain degree: It's intuitive.
Now bear with me here. I am not trying to justify heinous crimes, just attempt to explain the logic here. "Known thine enemy" and all that.

I see a person with a yellow cap throw a rock at my window. I chase him, but he gets away. A second kid walks passed, with a red cap. He doesn't throw a rock. Then another yellow-cap walks past. He does throw a rock. Now, naturally, I'm more on guard. My primitive induction has seen a pattern, and is attempting to create a rule for that pattern. Naturally, I want to avoid getting my window smashed in. Due to problems like confirmation bias, this discrimination is reinforced. I want to respond to reality intelligently, so use the little data my anecdotes supply. Am I unreasonable?

Now of course, I may have simply seen the two worst yellow caps of the lot. It may be that four yellow caps and two red caps just happened to have a bad day that day, and blame me. I may simply be wrong. But if I'm not wrong (the yellow caps are sworn anarchists), or even a little bit right, it's even harder to convince me that I shouldn't at least be a little cautious.

I'm not sure that's the best way to leave this response, so I invite a good refutation.

 

Discrimination is one of the most basic feature of human psychology. Humans discriminate between all sorts of things, like cheese and flowers and colors. I prefer gouda to swiss, the color blue to others, and tulips and crocuses above roses and daffodils. There is no way for humans to discriminate between everything else and not themselves. Furthermore, many reasons for discriminating against humans are not necessarily bigoted, such as personality and intelligence. That leaves only a few reasons that in most cases are entirely inexcusable, like race and sex, so it's hard for humans as a species to recognize these as different.

 

The root is sense of self, I think. Discrimination (as in differentiation) is a prerequisite for discrimination (as in prejudice). Anterior to differentiation is sense of self – the reference point against which others are differentiated. If you see yourself as a white male, i.e. if you categorise yourself by skin colour and gender, I think you will probably categorise others in the same way; that's the lens you're using. Whichever categories you use, you will probably relate better to those you identify as being in the same group. Kinda loosely related but, for me, that’s the real effect of the marketing sector: mass inducement of unconscious self-labelling to drive seemingly autonomous consumer behaviour. Thus, a mess.

 

Discrimination begins when differences arose amongst people and before that when individuals saw themselves different to others, gradually large sections of the society became prone to this idea.

How can we overcome is to realise the fact that the non-self is akin to the self.

"Realise that after all, we need a dole of bread, a shelter giving home and love. Rest of it is unwanted."

 

Not going to reitirate what has already been said. But i will add that being completetly indiscriminate is a fantasy. People will naturally discriminate people in the way we all judge people. This is especially true when first meeting someone. Everyone "judges a book by the cover" so to say, it's a natural predisposition to help the brain sift through large quantities of infomation quickly.

I will also add that other things like "unbiased" is also so rare to be considered a fantasy along with unicorns and fairy-tales. That is simply how the human mind works.

It should be noted that some act out on those 'first impressions' (so to speak) immediately whilst others are more reserved and opened to certain situations. Still, there will always be this taint there and the saying "Life is always easier if you're beautiful" is particularly true in this context.

"If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion" ― Sengstan, Hsin Hsin Ming

 

After 1.5 million years it's massively twisted but still the same - men measure.
Take 100 men and 100 women from any point in humanity, and boy-girl them all in a circle. Track their eyeballs with lasers. You will discover the first thing men look at is other men's dicks. We need to know. We need to know our place in the hierarchy. Yes, men will also measure the women, but only after sizing up the competition.
Now, there's no more dicks or pussies or titties to measure, and we need to invent a way to measure by fabricating twisted notions of superiority or inferiority. Lazy as we are, the easiest way to do that is to find some differential thing you can use to make someone else inferior to you. Security is the root of competition. Dial it up to 11 and let it degrade to delusion (some few thousand years ago) - hey presto, I give you racism!
Want proof? Take some number of modern (choke) humans, nude, and make certain each has no cultural or racial similarity to any other, and watch how fast we reboot.
There is no such thing as racial purity since we left the cradle of humanity. Racism is a delusional joke.

 

I'm not sure about the 'your dick theory.'

On my first day at the new job I did not check out the supervisor's dick. Today is the first time I have thought about his dick. I hope his dick works okay. Beyond the compassionate stance I doubt I'll address his dick issue again, unless via gaff during a pregnant pause in our workplace I say something like 'I was typing about your dick last week...ha ha...' I hope I don't do that. The other supervisor that first day - she had enormous pneumatic bosoms - they were striking at first, I think she's had a surgery, but they do not come between us now, down the line boobs are irrelevant.

Mat D Morris

 

Discrimination is necessary. Domination and downfall is a necessary dynamic to advance as a species.

 

The type of discrimination you're referring to? It hasn't.

But discrimination in and of itself? Since the beginning of time. And there's nothing inherently wrong with it. If I fire an employee that sucks at his job, I'm discriminating against low-skilled employees. If I hold tryouts for a rock band, and I don't select bad drummers, I'm discriminating against bad drummers.

 

It didn't become normalized, it existed long before the human race did—animals are automatically suspicions of other species especially if they live on the same resources and in the same areas. It's biological necessity. The idea of completely eliminating a basic biological function somehow through social programming is a delusional utopian fantasy.

However, we have to a large extent managed to outgrow the immediate and reflexive dislike or suspicion of people who are different. I only know 2 people who are really racist in the way that I think used to be much more common.

I always liked the line by Sidney Portier in the movie Look Who's Coming to Dinner: "The difference between you and me is, you consider yourself a black man. I consider myself a man."

 

Hardwired + n(years socio-bullshit + twisted) = racial delusion

(Everyone is entitled to My equal-opportunity opinonion)

 

Love it. 'Tis layer'd, Sire, and bringeth tears (of joy) to mine eyes.