With this topic, I immediately placed my mark all the way on the "true" end of the spectrum. This is because I felt that people aren't born with the tendency to hate others, but are rather taught that a group is either inferior or worse than they are. They can gain this perspective from teachers, parents, etc.
While I still feel that this is true, I feel like I need to shift my answer slightly more towards the "false" side, but not by much. This is because after some thought I feel like there is another aspect we need to consider in how hatred can be formed, and thats through unfamiliarity. While listening to the authority figures in your life can create hate in you, I think that it is human nature for a person to be intimidated by something they have had very little exposure to. For example, a white child who has never seen a black child until they were 13 is likely to shy away from the other person, and the opposite stands true. When we only have limited exposure to another set of people, we tend to assume that the little bit we see stands true for the entire race, thus we have now created prejudices within ourselves. Unfortunately it seems that more times than not, these assumptions we make about an entire group of people is negative, which is why I still feel that hatred is most learned, I feel like our distance from another group of people can lead us to hate, rather than being taught to hate.
I completely agree with your view that hatred is learned. I feel that if a parent teaches a child to accept anyone of any race, they will and it will continue in the future generations of that family. Although, if a child is taught differently then s/he will result to hatred among others. I also agree that if a child isn't accustomed to a integrated community that s/he will be racist when they come to an integrated community.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you completely on this issue. I also placed my "X" almost at the end of the "True" line. Kids are impressionable because they do not have their owns opinions on people, so they rely on their parents and teachers for what is right and what is wrong. Parents raise their children according to their own beliefs and if they are racist their children will most likely grow up to be racist. It is interesting that you mentioned how people are shy and that they tend to gravitate away from people they are not used to in schools and society. I have never thought of racism in this way before, but I think that you are absolutly right. We do, as humans, tend to ignore people we have never met or have not been around often such as colored people and people of different races or ethnicites.
ReplyDeleteI like how you thought of another reason of how racism is learned and completely agree with it. I used to be like that. I had barely any experience with the black race when I moved to a school that was about half and half. At first it really scared me and I was afraid of them, but I learned after a while that not all of them were bad and taught myself to not judge them because of their color. You pointed that possibility perfectly
ReplyDelete