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A second diagnostic hereditary peculiarity of human behavior is the overpowering instinctual urge to belong to groups in the first place. To be kept in solitude is to be kept in pain, and put on the road to madness. A person’s membership in his group — his tribe — is a large part of his identity. It also confers upon him to some degree or other a sense of superiority. When psychologists selected teams at random from a population of volunteers to compete in simple games, members of each team soon came to think of members of other teams as less able and trustworthy, even when the participants knew they had been selected at random.
All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry.
-- Edward O. Wilson at The New York Times
The power of the group, the reality of racism. If Wilson is right about group-level selection, it does lend greater credence to racism and racial segregation. This is not to say that people of different races cannot get along together, even marry, as well as live and work together, but it is exceptional, it goes against the grain. If this were not true, we would have been able to achieve much more social harmony by now. Nevertheless, life between the races can be better or worse. Short of some kind of Hitlerian 'final solution', we have to live and work together. Naturally, we would like to make this as decent and fair as possible.
All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry.
-- Edward O. Wilson at The New York Times
The power of the group, the reality of racism. If Wilson is right about group-level selection, it does lend greater credence to racism and racial segregation. This is not to say that people of different races cannot get along together, even marry, as well as live and work together, but it is exceptional, it goes against the grain. If this were not true, we would have been able to achieve much more social harmony by now. Nevertheless, life between the races can be better or worse. Short of some kind of Hitlerian 'final solution', we have to live and work together. Naturally, we would like to make this as decent and fair as possible.
