We often talk about the idea of nature vs nurture - whether our genes or our environment are the determinants of our psychology. For all the debate out there, I feel that it is (or should be) reasonably obvious that both play a significant role in shaping our world view and personality (i.e they're not mutually exclusive). Moreover, the two interact with each other - it is in our nature to adapt and learn from the environment in which we live. That innate ability to adapt is what has made us such a versatile and successful species.
Personally, I often find myself falling on the side of nature when thinking about these things. Part of the reason why is because I really do view humans as one views animals - driven by primal desires to survive and propagate genes. This is consistent with my evolutionary worldview (that consistency being a worthy exchange for the large quantities of cynicism this type of thinking brings). The nice thing is that even if humans are ultimately animals, I'm one of them and understand their language and individuality. I also think that we have a lot more complexity and layers, so much so that connecting our actions to those primal instincts can often be difficult or impossible.
There's one more caveat to my view. I sometimes feel that we're outgrowing some of those instincts, and slowly (or rapidly in geological age), we're finding enough distractions to give life a new meaning. And our emotions are what drive us to that meaning. But I'm not sure, and maybe those emotions just ultimately tie back to a primal instinct.
As a more specific example, a lot of us have made it our life's purpose to be joyful. This makes sense to me. Joy feels good. But maybe joy exists so we re-do what we just did to bring us that joy? Maybe this is important because whatever we did pertains to survival or gene propagation. It's easy to imagine in social settings. I imagine that the nice homo sapiens sitting around their fire 100'000 years ago felt joy in each other's company just as we do sitting around a pub table sharing drinks and food with friends. That feeling of joy would encourage them to seek that experience again, and thus strengthen those bonds with their fellow tribesmen. Social bonds directly led to survival (like when your buddy saves you from a lion), as well as gene propagation/protection of offspring.
Maybe the link to modern day is direct. Like when your buddy saves you on the math exam, thus letting you pass engineering, thus reaching the promised land of attractive ladies and a successful life (note: it's a lie). But likely it's not that simple. What is clear to me though, is that our survival has always been incumbent on social interactions, and that's why our emotions are so sensitive in social settings.
This is where we tie into the idea of racism. I feel that the waters have been muddied significantly and now we really do see racism as straight up discrimination against the colour of someone's skin. But ultimately it boils down into group-ism. It's not that those people are black, it's that they're not white (imagine I'm a white guy). It's in our nature to create groups and desire to belong to them. We need social interaction, but it's not social interaction with every human being ever, it's with a tight knit group that we can depend on and that shapes our identity. For the caveman, this was a necessity and it's pretty clear why. On the other hand, any person that he didn't need to depend on was competition for food (survival) and mates (gene propagation). So it's natural that he felt hostile towards other groups (remember, lion prides are territorial). As such, I have a strong personal conviction that discrimination on the basis of "groups" is a manifestation of a deep and primal instinct we all have.
One of the reasons I believe that is because it's one of those things which historically popped up across the world long before globalization, even appearing in isolated societies. Even now the world is fragmented and broken on the basis of religion, ideology, ancestry, appearance, etc. Growing up in Pakistan, it was made abundantly clear to me that describing someone meant noting their ancestry/caste and allowing the negative connotations/stereotypes to paint the picture.
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| Ethnic Groups in Pakistan |
So yeah, I feel that the root cause of racism is the same as the cause for terrorism, holy wars, genocides, etc. The ultimate motivation is protection or promotion of whatever group you have chosen to identify with. In hindsight, that really is obvious...It's just the semantics of the whole thing.
What's the difference between us and the caveman? For one thing, the world has gotten so big and we know/are exposed to so much that the groups we identify with have ballooned in size. Additionally, we associate ourselves with multiples groups. On the surface we're divided into countries and religions that number in the billions, and yet we're gamers, writers, musicians, engineers or doctors, etc.
And that instinct still kicks in. I'm a Pakistani-Canadian Engineer who likes metal music. When I hear of flood in Pakistan, my heart hurts. And it hurts more than when I hear of a flood in China. Similarly, when I meet an engineer or a metal head, I approach with just a little less shyness.
I think that this is where we get to "nurture" in this context. It's what dictates which groups make up our identity - groups we choose (at least mostly) based on how we're raised and the environment around us.
Coming all the way back to racism. Let's be clear. Humans have no distinct races. But over time, not only have we used the colour of people's skins as another way to divide us into groups, but also as a proxy to our culture. Colour is easy to identify, and traditionally, people with different skin colours have lived in different places of the world (i.e. have had different cultures). I think that innately, our culture is a massive part of our identity. But here's the thing...Culture all over the world is changing much more rapidly than it ever has before. And it's obvious what's to blame. Globalization and immigration has brought new ideas and practices to every land. So when our culture (associated with race) is threatened and our instinct to protect the "group" hits, it's easy to see how sometimes racism really is the manifestation of our nature.
So how does this relate to white supremacy? Now don't get me wrong, I am a brown fellow and one of the subjects of their criticism, but in a way they are right. "Traditional" American culture is totally being pooped on by immigrants. Moreover, the Caucasian "race" probably is being driven to an eventual "extinction." I don't think I need to pull up any numbers for it to be clear that white people are generally not making babies as fast as others. With immigration and globalization, I imagine that a few thousand years down the line we'll all be rather mixed, but anyway.
Back in the 40s and 50s, people in North America started moving en masse to the suburbs. The appeal of the suburbs was largely marketed on racial lines, even as the roots of the civil rights movement were taking hold in the public conscience. Imagine a utopia with big houses, green lawns and streets that children could play on without fear of crime. And wait, they're racially integrating schools? Well hey, this suburb is too expensive for the black people anyway so your children will be in a "pure" school. The suburbs became isolated little cultural zones in the country allowing racial segregation and protection of "culture" while bypassing laws that were giving equal rights to all people.
But things are changing now. Minorities are earning more, and we're seeing more and more integration and mixing in the suburbs. More and more kids are going to diverse schools. And there's been a large influx of immigrants. Immigrants bring their own culture with them. Overall, especially in North America, we're starting to integrate these cultures to create a new and diverse one of acceptance.
But we find ourselves in this awkward transitional stage wherein there's a clash between the traditional culture of the land and the traditional cultures of immigrants and minorities. We're still seeing some divisions in suburbs (e.g. Richmond Hill is a place Chinese immigrants go to, and Brampton is where the brown ones go), but ultimately we're spreading around enough to slowly destroy that original promise of the suburban white family. Children don't play on the streets anymore. There's other factors involved in that, like smartphones, but it's at least partially because the neighborhoods are filled with diversity and for the most part neighbors don't know each other. After all, it's difficult for parents who spent the first 40 years of their life in India to gel with those who were born and raised here or in China.
And there's so many other ways that I can imagine the settling of immigrants rubbing those who were born and raised here the wrong way. You're driving down the street you grew up on, and all of a sudden there's all these Chinese stores with signs you don't understand? How is it that in your home town, you can't read a store sign? Ultimately, these small daily things and the resulting pooping on white culture is going to result in resentment and the "group-ism" instinct is going to kick in.
Now look, there's a lot of factors that go behind racially motivated movements like white supremacy and black lives matter (no, I'm not saying they're the same thing). Through media and social-media, we're being exposed more to the sufferings of other people in our "group," and technology has allowed like minded people to promote their ideas even (even the socially unacceptable ones). And let's not even get into the existence of shit-faces like Rush Limbaugh. But I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of the racial tensions that seem to be popping up out of nowhere in North America seem to me to be the dying breaths of the old world order.
Are white supremacists the scum of the earth? Absolutely. Do black lives matter advocates have every right to be furious about the treatment of their compatriots? Absolutely. Does it feel like the world is going to shit all of a sudden? Kind of.
But I remain optimistic. And the reason for that is because of the overwhelming backlash to white supremacists. I mentioned that we're developing a new culture here in the developed world, a culture of acceptance and strength in diversity. And I really think that this culture is starting to dominate the public conscience. I think there's a lot of elements of traditional North American culture in it, but the most important thing is that we're slowly dissociating race from our national identity (i.e. just because that guy is Chinese looking doesn't mean he's not a Canadian).
I will admit to my bias from living in the liberal bubbles of Southern Ontario. But I think a lot of my optimism for North America comes from having grown up in Asia. Here, when the traditional culture was threatened, we've seen the election of Donald Trump (a vastly unpopular president) and a widely condemned White Supremacy movement. But this kind of thing has literally resulted in civil wars and genocides across the world.
I think that the election of President Obama as the first black president really brought up some of these feelings in "White America's" subconscious - especially because it was made to be such a big deal that he was black. One of the most threatening things to one's "group" is being ruled by another "group." Historically this has been the source of basically every conflict I can think of. This idea is what resulted in the bloody partition of India in 1947. In 1971, Bengali Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was elected the Prime Minister of Pakistan. This election resulted in a civil war which tore the country apart and concluded with the creation of Bangladesh. The Syrian Civil War, for all it's complexities, can largely be boiled back to the fact that Assad is a Shia ruler of a Sunni majority country.
And yet, the American union stands strong. After hundreds of years of racial tension, the election of a black president didn't tear apart the country. And I think that now we're feeling some of the underlying tensions it created, but man we're weathering this like a champ. I get it. In the developed world, we have to hold ourselves to the highest possible standard. And we must at all costs denounce movements which serve to divide us. But I really do think we're heading in the right direction. We're slowly starting to move past the idea that "race" is culture. And I'm optimistic that several generations from now, we'll have reached a post racial society.
There are other struggles. We need to spread this inclusive culture across the world, and it's going to happen very slowly (language in my opinion remains one of the greatest barriers). I think a lot of it comes back to good media and of course, good parenting. We must continue spreading the message that above all "groups" which constitute our culture and identity, there is one which is all encompassing and always true. It's that we're all human beings. I think that at this time in history, promoting this idea is one of the most important purposes we can give our lives. And that is where nurture comes in!
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