Is Racism Just a Form of Stupidity?

[KamaAina]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/is-racism-just-a-form-of_b_5694894.html

I think that a lot of us are shying away from an obvious truth: that the kind of blatant racial prejudice we are witnessing in Ferguson, Missouri, has everything to do with stupidity.

I'm talking about low intelligence, lack of mental ability, cognitive rigidity. Racists may be a lot of other things -- hateful, insecure -- but let's not sugar-coat what most fair-minded thinkers believe in their hearts: A person of intelligence cannot embrace such authoritarian and racist views....

But not entirely. A small cadre of psychological scientists have continued over the years to explore the controversial connection between low intelligence and prejudice, and at this point they have overcome most of the methodological barricades, allowing them to rigorously analyze and answer this important societal question. Two of these researchers -- Kristof Dhont of Ghent University, Belgium, and Gordon Hodson of Brock University, in Canada -- have been studying the idea and synthesizing the work of others, and they summarize the fruits of this ongoing project in a forthcoming issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. The short answer is yes, there is a clear, predictable and causal link between low intelligence and prejudice, including racism.

Let's not stop there, however. It's important, when dealing with such a controversial topic, to get down into the evidentiary weeds a bit. One of the problems plaguing the early research was that the results were confounded by other possible causes, like financial status and class and education. That is, it could have been these things, and not intelligence per se, that led to prejudice. Scientists had trouble sorting all this out. Scientists also didn't have longitudinal data -- data gathered on the same subjects over time -- so they could not address the important issue of cause and effect. Plus their study samples were not representative of the population. But scientists have over time solved these problems, and the key finding has held up: Empirical evidence has consistently linked low intelligence with prejudice.

[In_The_Wind]

1. yes

[unblock]

2. the way i see it, everyone absorbs prejudiced messages; it takes intellect to overcome these.

it seems to be that children don't inherently know prejudice, they are taught it from their parents and/or society. if people arrived at their own prejudices, different people would be dividing people in many more ways than we actually do. people don't think overly much of hair or eye color, for instance. there is some prejudice even there but nothing like race. few people are fired for having or not having hazel eyes.

so society's prejudices are taught and absorbed. i think this process requires very minimal intellect. it's virtually impossible *not* to absorb these messages. they're everywhere. whether you agree or not, your brain learns to divide people along particular lines, and your brain absorbs the messages that some certain categories of people have characteristics to fear or admire or whatever.

if your intellect stops here, you're likely to adopt these messages and be at least something of a bigot. i think you need to have the intellectual wherewithal to fight these messages (a constant struggle, really), which is perhaps why older people may exhibit some bigotry as their mental capacity diminishes even if they never showed any signs of bigotry earlier in life.

i think this is why bigoted words and thoughts come out more when people are temporarily impaired, e.g., drunk or under great stress. the messages are always there once you absorbed them as a kid and over time. switch off the intellect needed to fight it and out it comes.

[Rex]

3. Is ignorance a form of stupidity? nt

nt

[Boom Sound 416]

7. Ding!

[Glassunion]

10. Not really.

Ignorance can be fixed. Stupidity cannot.

Ignorance = Not Informed
Stupidity = Not Intelligent

When you're dead it's easy. It's only hard on other people. It's the same if you're stupid.

[NOLALady]

4. Willful Stupidity.

Willful Ignorance!

[Bjorn Against]

5. It is stupidity a lot of times, but not always

Racism is a form of oppression and oppressors are not always stupid, but they know how to rile up people who are.

[Silent3]

6. That of course doesn't mean that there aren't smart racists. They're the most insidious kind.

Intelligence is a multifaceted quality. To whatever degree racism is a form of stupidity, it's nevertheless quite possible to be smart in some ways and stupid in others at the same time.

Further, studies like this only show links, loose associations, not definitive cause-and-effect relationships which apply in all cases. I think racism might sometimes be an elaborate and clever form of self-deception, developed by people with a need to boost their own self esteem at the expense of easily identifiable inferiors, or with a need to boost their sense of belonging in one group in terms of opposition to other groups.

[Nye Bevan]

8. How many of us remember older extended family members, who were not stupid people,

saying horribly racist things? I think it is more ignorance than stupidity, in general. Of course, stupidity can always be a contributing factor.

[AngryAmish]

9. Ignorance but not stupidity

In group preference seems to be a feature of the human condition. I don't see anywhere on earth where racism/tribalism/in-group preference is not a fact of life. Here in the West we see less of it but it is still here.

People need to be taught that their natural inclination, if acted upon, hurts society.

[AverageJoe90]

11. Prejudice in general is stupidity, really. Racism or otherwise. nt