Kids understand what they’re taught. No baby is born racist, but instead, their parents teach that “the other” is dangerous/untrustworthy/“less than”/etc.
Without empathy, humans would not have formed societies. Humans being more social than neanderthals is what made humans “win”, and why neanderthals no longer exist (not counting interbreeding, since there is no modern being that exists that is considered to be a neanderthal). Sociopathy is considered a disorder for a reason, because it is considered to be out of the norm.
Bullies are, very often, if not most of the time, abused at home, or otherwise have a rough home life. That would also fall under the " nurture over nature" category.
atro_city@fedia.io 1 day ago
If racism weren't by nature, then it would only happen in some societies or groups, but it happens in all of them.
Empathy doesn't preclude evil.
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
I don’t think that premise is sound. Humans evolved from a central location and then spread out from there. There have been humans from back then who have taught their children to be scared of the other.
Nowadays, we see racism/sexism/religion/etc. as tools used by the elite to divide us so that the masses don’t turn against them. It isn’t so hard to believe that at the dawn of civilization, similar ideas spread.
Back in the hunter gatherer days, before civilization, it isn’t so difficult to believe that humans were equally scared of any stranger who they were not already familiar with, regardless of race.
atro_city@fedia.io 1 day ago
That entire premise falls apart when you let a person with a different skin color enter the room of children that have never seen that skin color before. There are even videos of it where children scream in horror.
And humans didn't just evolve from one central location. They evolved in parallel on an entire continent. They then also mixed with different subspecies.
defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Are those children babies or older? Children are taught to fear the other at an extremely young age. I’d like to see a similar study of newborns seeing a newborn of color for the first time.