Marshall Brain's Blog

If you publish things on the Web, you are sure to get email about it. And that is a good thing – one of the best features of the Web is instant feedback. As with anything in life, some people agree, and some people disagree.

Some people violently disagree. For example, here's a portion of an email I received a couple months ago:

"Kill yourself. Keep your opinions to yourself, you low life scum. And kill yourself. You'd be a martyr for the simple reason you saved humanity from having to run across your websites on accident. You're a horrible person."

"With the wheat comes some chaff," as they say, and I have learned a great deal from the wheat. Probably the only thing to do with the chaff is to ignore it.

I received some chaff this past week that caught my attention for some reason. Here is a portion of that email:

"The US was a powerhouse when it was essentially a White society. Sure, we had blacks, and that was a problem but we kept them largely contained and excluded. Yeah, I'm a racist.

And:

Japanese and White nations tend to share tech rather well, and their progress will also help White nations have a reason to expel non-whites, which whether you hate it, I like it, or not, is an idea whose time is coming, rapidly. This "rediscovery of good healthy racism" is going to be another part of the future."

The timing of the email meshes with the national debate on gay marriage, and the fact that the Nazi party held a demonstration in Raleigh this week. According to this article, "About 35 people calling themselves America's Nazi party called Jews, blacks and homosexuals the ruin of America during a rally at the old state Capitol in Raleigh." Hatred seems to be on the rise.

The obvious question is, "Will humans ever transcend hatred?" When you look at the bi-directional mayhem between Israel and Palestine, the Sunni vs. Shiite animosity in Iraq, the Christian vs. Muslim friction in France, etc. you could easily come to the conclusion that it may never end. Still, it is nice to dream of the death of racism.

When the "I am a racist" mail arrived, I ended up sending this response:

On the subject of racism, I will say I am at the opposite end of the spectrum from you. For me, people are people, plain and simple. A person is not "good" or "bad" because of any exterior trait. It does not matter if the trait is skin color, hair curliness or shoe size. Each person is an individual and acts on the basis of that individuality. There is no reason for hating a person because he/she is a member of some arbitrary (and meaningless) group based on a randomly chosen trait over which the person has no control.

Racism comes from the same faulty circuits in the brain that generate superstitions. For example, imagine a superstitious person who is told that "when a black cat crosses your path, it is bad luck". The next time a black cat is near and something bad happens, the superstitious person attributes it to the cat. On the other hand, when something good happens and the cat is nearby, that data is ignored. Through this process of selective attribution, the superstition hardens and perpetuates. It is obvious to any rational observer that the cat and its color are meaningless – the cat has nothing to do with good or bad results. The irrational keeper of the superstition participates in an illusion by ignoring most of the data.

Racism starts as a superstition applied to a group of people. This superstition then morphs into hatred. The hatred leads to words and actions. People dealt with through hatred often reciprocate in kind. Hatred breeds hatred, in other words, and you end up with a mess because of the reverberation.

Is it possible to change the mind of a racist? Is it possible to eliminate racism by talking to racists one at a time? I think so. At least in the U.S., through the efforts of millions of people, things are much better than they once were. There is still a long way to go. It cannot hurt to keep trying.