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The whole race and intelligence thing seems dopey to me. Let me say why.
If I want to help black people because more of them are poor than are white people, wouldn't it make more sense just to have a program that helps poor people?
If I won't hire black people because, on average (I believe) they are not quite as smart as white people, wouldn't I be better off just not hiring the individuals who seem dull to me? Wouldn't I be better off talking to each prospective applicant for a few minutes and hiring the individuals who seem smart regardless of their race? Any quantitative attempt to show a racial difference in intelligence shows that there are 100s of millions of black people who are smarter than 100s of millions of white people. Why use such a dopey standard?
Well, supposing I'm not quite smart enough to realize race is a really dopey proxy for the things I am really looking for. Is it immoral to use a dopey proxy, or merely stupid?
I don't think racism is caused by people thinking some race is inferior in some way. Rather the opposite, I think the statements of inferiority are a result of the racism, part of the mechanism one group uses to gain advantage over another in a social setting. Of course human minds being as recursive as they are, it is hard to unravel which comes first intellectually speaking.
I grew up in Hawaii, where at the time, whites were disliked. I am white. We were called "Haoles". Particularly when young, that made you a target of general low level harassment. Growing up, I was always looking forward to moving out to the "mainland" - continental US, and getting away from that crap.
So, I went away to college on the mainland. A whole new harassment free world. How sweet it was. But I'm at a bar one day, and some guy is getting in my face. Some white guy. It just seemed so odd. I don't think I'd ever had some random white guy trying to give me crap before.
People assert themselves by putting down other people. In Group vs. Out Group is one of the handier ways to do it, but there are plenty of other ways. Race is just convenient.
Another learning experience came from watching the Ginger episodes on South Park. I thought it was a big joke. Still do, but apparently it's a real prejudice in Britain. Really? Gingers? They're all just a bunch of Haoles to me.