On the Inevitability of Racism

“As psychoanalysis long ago has perspicaciously demonstrated, prejudice is universal to human nature and is evolutionarily informed.”

In today’s culture wars, where race is largely the locus of societal conflict, no one wants to broach the taboo head on out of fear that the powder keg will blow. But let us not mince words. We need to confront a most uncomfortable empirical fact most people would deny: Every person by nature is racist, and it is simply a matter of degree. We all know this, as we are intimately aware of our own emotional prejudices directed toward others; however, we largely keep this aspect of our psychic lives secret and reserved for our own private thoughts. Anyone who denies this is simply posturing, for it is not something one wants to admit or be forced to acknowledge publicly. As psychoanalysis long ago has perspicaciously demonstrated, prejudice is universal to human nature and is evolutionarily informed. But before I discuss the psychology of prejudice in more detail, I want to appeal to common sense and bona fide truthfulness.

Even though each person knows that he harbors some racist tendencies, even if only benign, we feel a need to deny it, especially in open social discourse because it is thought to be distasteful, even if we think it is mainly unconscious or due to involuntary attitudes or unintentional (implicit) bias. And this holds true for all peoples, regardless of skin color. No one gets a free pass or is exempt. We cannot escape this in our culture, upbringing, or social milieu as seeing race permeates our early familial environment, communal structures, and institutional politics of any given society. It simply becomes a question of how it manifests.

There is a considerable difference between those who believe that their race is inherently superior to other races and should a fortiori have control over them, let alone advocate hate simply based on the color of one’s skin—the premise of so-called “white supremacy” that most Caucasians do not endorse, as opposed to those who (consciously or unconsciously) harbor racist sentiments or attitudes directed toward alterity. Most decent people keep such thoughts to themselves along with a degree of shame, guilt, or humility as it is not in accordance with the better angels of our nature.

However, if we are honest with ourselves, we cannot deny our proclivity to pass judgments on others simply based on our emotional prejudices (and unconscious reactions) to people and events we dislike or have aversion toward. Prejudice is part of our inner constitution whether we like it or not. Anyone claiming not to harbor racist thoughts or dispositions is simply lying or wanting to appear morally virtuous. Give me one hour in a clinical interview with anyone, and I will prove my point. So let us stop pretending, stop pointing moral fingers as emissaries of ethical provenance, and accept this basic facet of our nature.