Quote:
Originally Posted by Adder
I don't know what a "cultural chasm" is, but no, the dispute is over power and wealth.
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The rift at the heart of all discrimination is one side's perception that people who who look or act differently are alien. By alien I mean somehow fundamentally different.
In regard to racism (a cultural chasm between people of different "races") here, that involves primarily skin color, hair, and facial features indicative of people being from certain non-European parts of the world.
Those features are of course surface, superficial, and not ones on which to base any conclusion about a person. We all agree on that. Hundreds of years ago, when we were less knowledgeable, people enslaved other people and justified it on the basis that those people were alien and lesser because certain of their features differed from the features of Europeans. Okay. So we all agree that was a mix of idiocy and evil. Science has proven the differences between alleged "races" are so thin they're not worth discussing.
And yet, hundreds of years later, this moronic thinking - still rooted in the notion somebody looks different than somebody else - persists. I agree with you that the powerful and wealthy wanting to protect their positions is part of it. But the powerful and wealthy do that in regard to everyone who challenges them, of any "race." And the racists in this country are not all powerful and wealthy. Not by a long shot. The racism that persists still has a lot to do with something as stupid as amount of melanin in one's skin. That that has persisted is simply mind-boggling.
