As I have said in my previous post, the so-called “good will” definition of race was soon infested with eugenics and Nazism. Blacks, for example, were stupid, lazy, and irresponsible, while Mongolians (yellow Asians) were lazy, stealthy, and physically weak. The history of race is fraught with blood shedding and malevolent discriminations.

Well, human beings are different, hierarchically, claimed by racists.

Yes, people are different. Walking on the street, one can’t help thinking that there must be some major differences among Blacks, Whites, and yellows. They all have distinctive skin colors, noses, eyes, and body shapes. Then, what other things can they differ besides physical characteristics? The English that Blacks speak is somewhat different from what you hear from Whites. In many downtowns, jobless Blacks hang around idly and look dangerous. In an individualistic society where everything is on one’s own, one may wonder what happens to them. Are they just lazy? At least they seem so.

Psychologically speaking, when one evaluates himself, he may tend to attribute his failure to environmental factors such as bad boss, depressing work environment, or even miserable marriage. When one evaluates others, he may simply attribute other’s failure to their personalities. Everybody has this attribution bias. It is not surprising that one thinks the unemployed person must have bad personality such as lazy, bad tempered, or irresponsible.

Most researchers will discard the view that one’s personality causes his unemployment (although in some cases it may be true). Individual education and skills, overall economics, and even luck, are main culprits. So why do people believe that the unemployment in Blacks but not in Whites is due to their personalities?

A dangerous word emerges—stereotype!

Scientifically, stereotyping is a natural way of thinking. Human beings comprehend the world by classifying it. Simplification is the most efficient way to understand the complicate environment. When the whole world was opened up to westerns, human beings from five continents looked and behaved so different. There was a definite need to group human beings into different “species”.

Stereotype leads to prejudice. The “civilized” westerns (and even easterns) would certainly look down on those Blacks who were still living in huts, mostly naked, and hunting with rudimental tools. The Blacks are primitives, all explorers concluded. Slave trade was initiated. Even some American founding fathers concluded that Black slaves should be counted as a fraction of Whites in census, and not be included in the umbrella of federal constitution.

Similarly, when westerns encountered east or south Asians in 16^th centuries, they saw a physically smaller human beings living in agricultural society. Without sophisticated weapons, those Asians were defeated. The large socioeconomic gaps between western and eastern countries made Asians socially lower than westerns. It is interesting that before then, eastern Asians (esp. Chinese) thought that people in the rest of worlds were uncivilized (and it was also based on socioeconomic standard).

Another factor that many scholars ignored also made earlier westerns more prone to prejudice. The religion, esp. Christianity, sows much prejudice in the minds of western people. You may argue that Jesus told us to love our neighbors, how come I accuse Christianity as a prejudice religion? My conclusion is based on history of Christianity, not on the bible. The persecuting of pagans, the killing of many witches, and the hundreds of years of crusade to central Asia, are some well known examples for religious prejudice. Even now, the perceived higher morality in Christians makes many of them think atheists have looser morality.Furthermore, the eager to convert everyone and the wish to live in heaven while curse nonbelievers to be stuck in the hell clearly establish a hierarchy between believers and nonbelievers. The Christian hypocrisy of “love” is just for believers, not for nonbelievers. Unfortunately, modern wars are still having religious elements in them.

Belief leads to action. Prejudice causes discrimination. Along the way were racism, slavery, wars, Holocaust, KKK, racial segregation, and so forth. Fortunately, in modern society, overt racism is rare. Thanks for the great efforts and sacrifices of earlier human right fighters. However, subtle prejudice (or not-so-subtle in the eyes of disadvantaged groups) are still pervasive. That unemployed Blacks are lazy is one of such examples.

Seeing is believing. When one observes some differences among human beings, he is eager to find answers. The simplest answer (or “parsimonious answer”, to be scientific) is because they are different in their bloods. Their genes are different.