By INYOURFACENEWYORKER
Added: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:50:45 UTC

As often happens, my brain goes into one of its tailspins and asks, "WHY?"

This week, I was thinking about the kinds of... for lack of a better word... doublethink that go on and have gone on in terms of racism. What I find a difficult time wrapping my head around is how (correct me if I'm wrong) only in the past hundred years or so people have taken serious steps to combat racism. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years, but only recently are we attacking racism.

I have a really hard time wrapping my head around how 150 years ago Americans could enslave black people. The same father who loves his family dearly could whip a slave and watch him cry in agony with the same cavalier attitude we would have at stepping on an ant. Same thing in Nazi Germany when they had their slavery, torture, etc.

Here's an image in my mind that is really boggling: Families with young children going on picnics to watch the lynching of a black man. Once again, my mind fills in the blanks. I imagine a mother telling her child, "See honey? They're going to lynch the N*****" in the same tone someone might say to their kid on a trip to the zoo, "See honey? See the bear?" I imagine the kid laughing and clapping, as if she's watching a seal bouncing a ball on its nose.

Really, how is it that this contradictory behavior (watching a man get lynched then going home and saying "Honey, I love you") happened so readily throughout history?

Any insights? I seem to remember reading somewhere, perhaps in one of Richard's books, that racism is thought to have been an adaptation to help recognize people not in your tribe-- certainly, someone whose skin is a different color would not be in your tribe-- who would most certainly be competing against yours for resources. Okay, that makes sense. But really, how can so many people watch someone get tortured and be okay with it? Why only recently...

Well you get what I'm asking. I wonder if anybody has any insights into evolutionary reasons for such doublethink...

Julie

TAGGED: ABUSE, BEHAVIOR, EVOLUTION, HATE, HUMAN RIGHTS