The Real Roots of Racism

 

Scott Adams made a vital and often misunderstood point in his latest YouTube video: he makes the necessary distinction between “white supremacist” and “white racist” by observing that people are never racist because they think they are inferior to the group they hate. Racism comes from thinking you are inferior, or at least threatened.

I think the same may go for hatred and discrimination in general.

Hitler and the Nazis and the Germans who supported them hated the Jews because the Jews seemed to run everything; they did not really think the Jews were inferior, although that might have been their alibi. The South African whites, in the days of apartheid, hated the blacks because they were vastly outnumbered. Moreover, the Zulus were famously fierce and effective warriors, who had not long ago “broken the British square.” 

Black slavery in the US South was probably nothing personal, and not really about racism. It was about money, and cheap labour. The hostility to blacks after the Civil War probably had to do with the fact that freed slaves constituted half the population; and they had, at first, the aggressive support of the federal government. They looked like a constant danger; whites no doubt feared being raped or murdered in their beds.