Racism is a significant social problem throughout the world. The tendency to make snap judgments about others based on their appearance or the color of their skin is one of humanity’s ugliest attributes. It also seems to be a persistently stubborn habit.

Types of Racism: The Conscious Vs. Unconscious Variety

To a certain degree, all of us are innocent racists at times on account of how our brain functions. We categorize, group, and form stereotypical associations by nature. So even someone who harbors no animosity or disparaging views toward people who are different can nonetheless find themselves engaging in stereotypical thinking, because our brains inevitably seek to stereotype everything in our world,+whether people, objects or situations. The human mind is essentially a giant association machine, one that’s constantly looking for shortcuts that will help it decipher the world with the least amount of work. So we inevitably develop unconscious associations in regards to a person’s racial appearance, just as we make unconscious judgments based on gender, clothing, age, body type, beauty, blonde hair, or any of the other thousands of cues within our environment.

The media and movies we’re exposed to, the people we hang out with, our personal experiences–we all develop internal templates that can lead to stereotypical thinking about race. Black people develop stereotypical associations about white people, and white people do the same toward Blacks. Until aliens come to swap out our brains for an upgraded version, (so far they haven’t responded to my messages that this is urgently needed here on planet Earth), some degree of stereotypical thinking is inherent to the human condition.

This innocent form of racism can sometimes have significant real-world consequences, such as when it leads to hiring biases that a person isn’t even aware of. But it is of an entirely different beast than conscious racism. We all need to be aware of this tendency toward stereotyping in ourselves, but it is easily corrected so long as we’re conscious of the tendency to do it. Those minorities inclined to take great offense to these innocent categorization foibles should remember that they do the exact same thing in the other direction.

Then there are those whose racism exists more on the surface. It is ingrained into their belief system, playing a central role in the conscious judgments they make about others. This is the ugly form of racism that most of us despise.

Sadly, this form of racism also seems to be on the rise. As a white man, I don’t recall encountering real-world racism growing up, nor as a young adult, except for what I had seen on TV. Then Obama was elected president and people’s buried insecurities started bubbling up toward the surface.

This ugly form of racism can be extremely hurtful and destructive. Yet it’s important not to respond to such ugliness with more ugliness ourselves. Ironically, this ugly type of racism isn’t actually about race at all. It’s about feelings of insecurity or inferiority. Racism (a means of elevating oneself by placing others beneath you) is merely a method of coping with personal insecurity–a way of elevating one’s perceived position in the world. Which is why racism has risen as more lower-class white folk feel more and more disenfranchised. Animosity toward those who are different is merely the hollow vessel for these underlying insecurities.

Attacking those who harbor such tendencies makes them more insecure, and thus only translates into more racism, not less of it. So we should all try to approach this problem with a little more love and compassion. Despise the racism, not the person it flows through.

Do separate human races even exist?

The problems created by racism are all the more tragic because racial divisions don’t actually exist. Race is a social construct; an artificial division we create with our eyes. The idea of separating Blacks from whites or Hispanics or Asians is no more valid than dividing people by chin type, hair color or eye color. Dividing your own children into separate races because one has red hair and the other is blonde would have as much scientific validity as any of the other race divisions we create. We are all of the same race, one large human family.

Yet belief in racial divisions is a persistently stubborn illusion. Even doctors continue to categorize people by race, despite the fact that there aren’t any biological differences between humans, so the only metric being captured is socioeconomic status.

Information on race & racism

The following pages will shed further light on race an racism, discussing the science of why race is an illusion, and outlining the effects and consequences of racism in our society. Please help us out by sharing a link to these pages with everyone you know. Hopefully it can make some small dent in the prejudice that plagues our society.

• Defining Race
• Institutional Racism
• Myths & Facts About Race
• Racism In America
• Racism in the Justice System
• Subtile Forms of Racism
• The Race Illusion