Ever since I studied anthropology in college, I've had a sneaking suspicion that racism/ethnic intolerance has its roots in very early human behavior. It's a vestige of the first tribal societies where members were free to practice violent forms of xenophobia against people who were different or belonged to other tribes competing for the same natural resources to survive. There is growing evidence that homo sapiens exterminated Neanderthals in the first act of genocide around 40,000 years ago.
This may explain why racism/ethnic intolerance hasn't vanished in spite of laws, religious teachings, political correctness and other forms of social condemnation. Although all behavior is learned, some types of very old behavior become semi-instinctive on a subconscious level.
First and foremost, humans are animals. They are not creatures made in heaven to always act compassionately. All people have a dark side beneath the veneer of civilization. These facts may be unsettling to accept, but denial is potentially far more dangerous.
It isn't rational to hate someone simply because they belong to a different race or ethnic group. But a lot of human behavior is driven by irrational or non-logical factors -- love, art, religion, mythology, etc. Even altruism isn't "logical" when it violates the instinct for self-preservation as occasionally happens.
The primitive part of the human brain is hard-wired for certain behavior: sex for pleasure and procreation, eating, the fight-or-flight response to perceived threats, etc. At the earliest point in our evolution this was the only kind of "intelligence" we possessed -- and it was enough to insure human survival. But we survived as members of bands and tribes, not as a homogenous species. Part of that adaptive strategy involved xenophobia that became hard-wired. The Other was seen instinctively as a threat to tribal survival and treated harshly like any other threat.
Today's humans are descendants of tribes that either out-competed other tribes for natural resources, forcing them into extinction, or killed them off in organized violence (warfare.) This is not simply a remnant buried deeply in our ancient past. It's part of who were are now and it still influences our behavior to some degree. Even the most intelligent modern person is prone to slip into the "us and them" mode of thinking from time to time.
Of course I'm not trying to justify racism or ethnic intolerance. This type of hatred is morally indefensible and imperils the cohesion of modern society. I believe races and ethnic groups will eventually disappear at some point in the future when humans become a genetically homogenous species. I also believe this is a natural and desirable outcome of human evolution. In that future world of one people xenophobia will have no basis for motivating behavior.
In the meantime we have to deal with a vestige of ancient tribal instinct. Which is why I wasn't overly surprised to hear about ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, genocide in Rwanda, or the Islamic jihad against "infidels."
Thoughts?
