(February 8, 2015 at 12:39 pm)Dystopia Wrote: I am using race as a social construct. I'm aware that biologically there's no evidence for "races", but I'm warning people beforehand to avoid comments like "race doesn't exist". When I talk about race, I mean physical and cultural features we link to specific groups of people
I am curious, what drives some people to be racist against their own race? This isn't as rare as I thought. My girlfriend has gipsy ancestry, which basically means she looks white with slight Indian-like traits. She hates her ancestry, she really does, she is racist against gipsy people and denies that she has such ancestry. It's not rare for her to suggest a stereotype such as "Gypsies live on welfare and are criminals" is true. I don't really make a big deal about this, as people have the right to be racist against anyone and it doesn't impact me that she thinks half of her biological family (she's adopted) are a bunch of low class morons.
But it bothers me somehow - If I found out I had ancestry from 'x' ethnic group, I wouldn't care much, but I wouldn't simply say that group sucks because I would automatically self-label myself due to me being a part of that group.
Another example - A colleague in university is black, and he once said "Whenever I see a black man at night, I cross the street right away".
Why do people do this?
Why would there have to be a different cause of prejudice if one is prejudiced against one's own group instead of another group? I think the answer is the same as why people are racist generally, which has already been suggested by Nope and Homeless Nutter.
There is no reason why prejudice must be against other groups; it can be against a group to which one belongs. The cause (or causes) of the prejudice can be the same either way.
And this applies to more than prejudice about race. I have encountered women who don't want women bosses; it is not just men who are prejudiced against women. (I myself have always liked having women bosses, because they generally think I am great for just doing my job and not causing trouble for them the way so many other people do. And from seeing some of the things they encounter from those who work for them, I totally understand why they think I am so great. But it is not because I do anything great for them; it is because I fail to be a total asshole.)
I think prejudice is the result of sloppy thinking. It is much easier to just judge a whole group together than to bother with actual facts about each individual and judge them individually.
So I think it is laziness and stupidity. And, of course, it can be initiated by indoctrination, the way any fool beliefs might be. Those who do not bother with thinking the matter through, end up retaining their prejudices, just like people who do not think things through very well often retain their religious indoctrination. And I might as well add, just because one bothers to think about one thing carefully, that does not mean that one will bother to think about everything else with equal care. So one can escape from one stupid belief or set of beliefs while retaining some other stupid beliefs.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
