Quote Originally Posted by Lemur View Post
Depends. No, I would not choose to associate with people involved in cannibalism or systematic child abuse, to pick random examples, but I think the left-right thing can (and does) get overblown. I have an uncle, for example, who believes that America should be separated into two halves "so that real Americans won't have to live with liberals." Seriously. He likes to drink hard and yell this at inappropriate moments. Needless to say, he watches hours of Fox News daily. I think this sort of extreme tribalism is unhelpful, even if it is based on political orientation rather than race. It's still an expression of unbridled, low-effort, uncritical Us Versus Them.


But the impulse to racism is tribalism. Racism is not some unique evil that emerges from the netherworld; it's a distortion of a natural human impulse. I think that's kinda important to acknowledge.

Another true story: My new lemur wife works in a rough neighborhood. There was a shooting outside her place of business recently. She gets jumpy when she sees young black men in this neighborhood. She worried out loud that she was giving in to racism. I pointed out, "You don't have a problem with [x, a programmer with my company], do you?" Nope, she does not. "You don't have a problem with [y, a mutual friend], do you?" Nope. "But they're black as well. So you're not responding to race, you're responding to race in a specific setting where you already have evidence of violence. That's not prejudice, that's empiricism."
As with everything, discrimination must be done logically. For instance, child abuse is not part of the beliefs espoused by the Catholic Church, therefore it would be stupid to assume that all Catholics are child-molesters (but probably wise to not let your son be an altar boy, even if child-molestation is not an official policy of the Church).