It makes absolutely perfect sense that babies are racist. Simply a matter of evolving in a tribe and clan based society. The idea of a global society hasn't been around long enough for biology to catch up.
I hope CO responds, he has read many of the same books on brain research. There is a lot of evidence that humans have two different brains. One is older, and more base. This is the fight or flight lymbic system. That system tends to react quicker than our more evolved brain. It makes sense, when danger is real and present, speed of reaction is important.
Our more advanced system is what allows us to debate if Lord of the Rings is an allegory for WW2.
That base system would, by default, look for markers in people that show they are not members of one's own tribe. And for good reason.
Most of us have developed systems to overrule our base system. I am going to say something here and now that I do not think conservatives will understand based on their posting.
If I am walking alone at night and run across 4 groups, one of young blacks, one of young whites, one of older blacks, and one of older whites, my initial reaction is less tense in that order. Now I am able to quickly wrangle in that initial fear, but that initial fear exists. So i subscribe to the theory of two brain systems, one more advanced one less.
One other part of this concept, has anyone been in a work meeting and suddenly thought of something non work related? Something like where you want to eat, or remembering an event that night, or even a sudden memory of where you parked? This is the same thing, your primal system operating at the bios level that the OS level cannot read has made a decision to insert this idea into your operating system. It happens all the time and scientists can actually measure the time it takes for the bios to send that idea to the OS and have it get acknowledged.
Bios and OS are not the terms used. But working with computers makes.it an easy way to explain it.
A couple weeks ago I linked an article on empathy. They have studied people and their politics. Conservatives believe the world is more harsh and cold than liberals. Conservatives believe the best way to protect oneself is family first and do whatever you need yourself. Liberals view the world as more friendly and one can depend on group collaboration.
This all makes sense in our tribal days. We needed people to be afraid of eating the new mushroom. Otherwise the whole tribe could be killed off. But we needed someone willing to eat it to grow our food sources.
