echidna

Racism is simply a manifestation of the human activity of generalisation, itself a tool which we need to simplify our complex worlds into manageable chunks. That’s not to say that racism is needed, just that generalisation is needed, BTW.

We all exhibit forms of “bigotry” to survive or to practically function, the assumption that a person of Chinese appearance might speak Chinese, or might be able to use chopsticks, might be a valid assumption.

Bear in mind that “racism” & “bigotry” are both very loaded words, that they imply negative traits generalised from physical characteristics. Notice that positive generalisations are even encouraged (“Chinese people are very gentle”, “black people have a great sense of family”, etc) But negative traits aside, many traits & tendencies can be implied & may even statistically valid.

One crucial distinction to realise, is that these generalisations are rarely universal & one must always be prepared to honestly acknowledge that varying percentages of the population do NOT fit the generalisation, often even the generalisation is false & represents only a small percentage. Personally I derive great enjoyment from the exceptions which break the mould, the daily cultural surprises which remind us just how inadequate many (if not most) of our cultural stereotypes are, but that’s just me.

So Political Correctness should not override all generalisations & this is so often where PC suffers from ridicule. Is it racist to say that “Muslims generally oppose the political existence of Israel”, or Hong Kong Chinese are shorter than northern Mainland Chinese ? I don’t think so, objective polls & demographic studies support the statements. But one must be able to objectively support the statement which is where so much racism falls down. I would however object to the statement “Muslims oppose the existence of Israel”. Commonly such inflammatory remarks omit the generalisation & extend it as an absolute, dangerously painting a deliberately false picture.

So when one dislikes people with red hair, is it :

Because they dislike red hair per se ?
Because red hair is causally linked to another characteristic of dislike ?
Because red hair correlates without cause to another characteristic of dislike ?

Each dislike needs to be analysed in depth as to what exactly is its source.