Deep within the Mind:

Is Racism Hardwired into the Human Brain?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2164844/Racism-hardwired-human-brain--people-racists-knowing-it.html

From how I was raised throughout my life I never thought racism was that big of a deal. I always thought it was a rather silly thing to do. Why would anyone want to endure so much work just to hurt someone solely because they have a different skin colour than you. But I realised now, it delves a lot deeper than that. A bit more complex.  My ethnicity is half Indonesian and half mixed European. My blood consists of multiple races. I have travelled all over the world throughout my life and I have always enjoyed observing people's natural beauty.  (Not like a stalker mind you.) But specifically people's physical characteristics in each country. In some ways, I feel as though I see the world in a third person perspective. In class, when Christine Hong explained about the word "foreigner" or as the French say, "flaneur", it struct me. I realised that this is exactly who I am. I don't have that home country I can be patriotic towards. I don't even have a home really. I just go wherever I feel I should go.

So with that said, unless everybody mates with each other, eventually through evolutionary time, in theory we would all end up looking relatively the same. We would all have blended physical appearances from traits all over the world. What then? Would that erase the concept of racism? Just let that sink in.

I wanted to mention that, because I have encountered this interesting article the other day about whether racism is actually in fact hardwired into our brains. I understand this is quite debatable no doubt, but I feel that this is one of the most essential concepts we must try to comprehend in order to understand what underlies our so called humanity.

It states that scientists have found out that there are regions of the brain that hold the ability to represent social groups. The circuits in that part of the lobe contain similar chemicals that are used to conduct emotional decision making.  Interesting, huh? So whether you love to boast how egalitarian you are, like "Oh I never judge races.", "Everyone is good." NO. Racism, I think, is an eternal social dilemma. Unless we genetically modify ourselves, there is no way to completely eradicate the notion. We will always "label" and "stereotype"others. It is a trait that so far, humans have survived on.  It is there for a reason. It is written in our history textbooks, written in our blood, written in our flesh for a reason. Instead, the only thing we humans can do is to mitigate the negative attitude towards a particular social group if we wish to avoid conflict that can potentially dehumanise others with the use of primeval methods such as slavery, uncontrolled violence, and terrorising fear.

The human mind is absolutely fascinating isn't? In fact, isn't that why our world exists? We exist because our mind made us think we are. Unfortunately I should stop writing now before I catch myself digressing over existentialism matters and getting really off topic.