Our quick mode of thinking - the one that we use intuitively, which includes instinct - exists for superficial profiling of people.
Racial discrimination is linked to whether a person prefers the quick mode or the slow mode of thinking. It's easier to just discriminate against people with a less familiar skin color rather than taking the time to reconsider.
Also, when you reconsider your initial judgement of a person, you have to justify it, which can be painful. "Did I really think these thoughts? That's not nice." The less pain-tolerant a person is, or the less a person uses slow thinking, the more likely they are to stick to their initial judgement, so they won't have to question themselves.

We don't voluntarily change our thoughts and behaviors unless the easier path that we used to take becomes too burdensome. Only then do we look for an alternate path, i.e. in this case questioning our prejudices towards foreign-looking people.
Furthermore, if we have added incentive to apply our existing prejudices, then we are even less likely to find an alternate path. Such incentive could be a personal bad experience.

What stands behind all this is evolutionary: we've evolved to walk the easier path (whatever we perceive as easier).

Irrational behavior is included in this, we're not inherently rational creatures, we're just capable of rational behavior. Whether we choose to behave more irrational or more rational depends on many factors, and among those factors is the above mentioned quick thinking mode. The more we use that one, the more irrational we behave. Thus racial discrimination is a logical outcome of our evolution. We have evolved to discriminate racially.

I'm aware racial discrimination may just be a byproduct of one of our evolved traits and not a direct purpose of it, but one could argue that for many other things as well, so I think it's a valid argument.

Also, research shows that, as groups, all races discriminate.

(not talking about individuals)

@Holo It's not beneficial it's called, prejudicial. Because you are preparing yourself, against your competitors.

You can rationalise your prejudices, by not being a stereotype. Although , nowadays, we are in a phase of - "group clustering. "

There are other social experiments in the past about it, but, it does have drastically - terrible outcomes. When you stereotype people and then that brings about an irrational fear.

Stereotypes are useful: they provide you with an approximation of reality with little need for you to analyze the situation. If you see a black youth in baggy pants, with a bear chest, tattooed up, with a baseball bat, in some US inner city it is perfectly reasonable to want to avoid him rather then try to seek out further information about weather it's safe to be around him or not (unless you perhaps really have to try to be around him).

.
On the other hand this has *very* little to do with specifically race-based discrimination. It's about a set of characteristics (one of which is being black) in a given environment that you associate with danger. You associate the fact he is black with danger because blacks in Murica tend to commit more violent crimes. In places where blacks aren't particularly common, the fact that someone is black just makes him weird on the other hand. And the other is always a bit scary because we fear the unknown as a very basic survival instinct (if you don't know what a thing is, you poke it with a stick a bit before hugging it). But the point is all the Murican stereotypes about nigger don't apply in this context, the locals don't associate blacks with anything at all so they just keep their distance more then usual as they would with any unknown thing.

.
All this to say that: yes, we absolutely automatically discriminate against the other. It's quite unlike what Amerimutts are accustomed to as far as racial tensions go. It's an entirely different mechanism for the most part. Mutts are not only largely accustomed to blacks being around, but they also are so accustomed to them that they have culturally ingrained stereotypes about them. This is nothing like a (more or less) first contact situation. And a first contact situation is where you could reasonably try to measure such things as the difference between what is the difference between when a group meets a stranger that looks akin to them, as opposed to when they meet someone that looks quite different. Otherwise you get lots of uncontrolled for cultural noise. I'm, by the way, sure that the average response to the stranger that looks more akin would be more positive. But to what degree? I don't think any study that claims to measure something like this is serious in our modern, interconnected day and age. I also think mutts' optics on this are quite cringe and gay, simply because of how much your society revolves around racial tensions to begin with...

I mean... You dumb cunts have an everyday linguistic taboo around the word "nigger" is how central this topic is to your culture!!! You're the least objective population to talk about this subject I can think of... And yet y'all study this shit in your ridiculously biased country. 0/10 for methodology tbh.

@TEABAG!!! @Holo @Holo

@ETBrooD

#SocialPsychologyIsAScam

I believe western society has successfully erased much of the intrinsic racial discrimination from our minds as part of our upbringing, and that's why we don't see as much of it as we would otherwise. So I think we've gotten about as far as we can get with eliminating racial tensions. To try to decrease it further by means of enforcement seems naive and can easily be pushing it too far, to the point where people who were brought up to be tolerant may actually start to push back and become less tolerant.
This would indicate that some people do have a natural propensity to discriminate racially, not neccessarily because they put much weight on race itself, but because discrimination is natural, and thus racial discrimination is also natural, as it is simply one form of it.

@Tonight at 11 - DOOM

Western societies, in some cases, stopped enforcing racial discrimination by law 50 years ago. This is NOT enough time for society to change very much. So Expecting it to have done so is just unreasonable. That shit takes generations. People who complain about how racist America is (or some shit like that) are just dumb cunts who would like social change to happen overnight where that kind of shit does not work like that.

A culture builds itself around evolutionary pressures, for example the survival of the fittest. Our culture conforms to these pressures, for example, by selecting environments based on our natural desires. We tend to want our children to look more similar to us than not, and this includes skin color obviously. Our sexual preferences thus inform our economic choices. We invest more time and money into mating with similar-looking partners than foreign-looking.

"We tend to want our children to look more similar to us than not"
We do?

Where do we find similar-looking partners more often, well obviously in racially homegenous communities.

Yes, we do. There's research on that.

Cool. Is it good research? Is the effect particularly strong?

Can't say how strong it is, I'm not researching this stuff myself, so I have to trust other people's research and that will always mean there's a strong chance for error, especially in the humanities.

What I do know is that the dating preferences are strong.

Like, I understand that fathers like to feel like their kid is really theirs for parental certainty reasons

but beyond that, it seems odd

Ok, but dating preferences can totally be culturally ingrained. It's hard to control for stuff like htat

It's just a general trend, individuals are different.

There's no doubt that it's true, we have tons of data on racial preferences.

Whether it's because we want our off-spring to look relatively similar to ourselves, that's a different question and doesn't even need to be considered as part of the argument.

The thing is, we seem to pick our mate mainly for biological features. Height is one of the biggest factors. Skin color is another. I actually did a self-test for this, and at least for me it's true.

I'm not even sure what the argument is? If it's that racial discrimination is natural then this means nothing because you cannot control for cultural factors with this.

I have much higher standards for black women than white women, as I strongly prefer whites over blacks out of an equal number of picks.

I know this is just me, but it never hurts to confirm my own bias 😉

TFW you miss a majority of the discussion and now feel alienated <:konatacry:351776320134447115>

Well, there's absolutely no doubt that whites and blacks self-degregate in the US

self-segregate*

Anyways, my only point in this entire matter is that it's not racial discrimination, it's just profiling. A white person can't racially discriminate against a white person I think(? I have second thoughts on this so if someone could counter that please) so the entire matter revolves around profiling instead which can have a subset of profiling that is based on race

The reason why the US is such a good place for this type of research is because so many other factors are equal, like language.