These are my political rants. Anything I put here I'll also probably put in my LJ.
Racism - It has been a human tradition to fear what you don't understand. Hence when a parent shelters their child from society and at the age of five they are blasted with public schooling, hence introducing them to new people, surroundings and, most prevalaintly, ethnicities and religions, there are multiple ways to react. One is to immediately understand and hence embrace diversity. Another is to recluse from fear. As stated in my LJ a while back, Star Wars, if anything, has taught me one valid lesson about society; fear inevidably leads to anger and anger to hatred unless those emotions are harnessed and re-channeled; something a five-year old doesn't have much of an opportunity to learn. How the example child will react is based on, in my opinion, two principle factors; their upbringing in the home and their involvement in the religious community. Regardless of a tangent rant that could so easily create, a child will react in one way or the other. People who embrace diversity usually end up being popular and people who recluse usually form their own tiny circles of people who also reclused giving them the (not entirely false) impression that their opinions and actions are socially manageable. The first five years of human life is the time during which children are most vulnerable to building impressions based upon their surroundings. If a recluse's opinions are not recognized and overcome they will most likely remain a recluse for years to come and eventually have their emotions evolve into racism.
Racism has been formed this way for generations upon generations. Blacks were so easy to discriminate in the years shortly following the civil war because most Americans, Northern or Southern, were used to the concept of Blacks not being at the same level of social equality as Whites. When children went to school there were no blacks, so most children would instantly minimize their social value. Especially in the 1910s and 1920s some children may have been born to grandparents who lived in times of slavery where their childhood would have been filled with the story of how Blacks were once slaves to Whites. Despite many social advances, old grudges die hard and tales of Black inferiority have been passed on through generations through parents, and media such as books, but especially history books. The 1990s brought the internet to the masses and made the spread of racism easier than ever before; typing holocaust in a Google search will, from my previous experience, get you about 1 page saying the holocaust never happened for every 50 or so that recount it; a frightening ratio. The conclusion? Racism exists and in wider spread than many people realize or admit. It exists in the school I attend where I have been called by several people (all fitting the classification of recluse I have been describing) a kike, and homosexuality, unfortunately, is still socially considered to be insulting. When examined logically calling somebody gay should be no different that calling them Black, Jewish, or for that matter straight, White or Christian. There are only three things in the world that can bring racism to an end; Responsible, non-racist parents, strict anti-racist government policies (both domestic and international; that specifism will be elaborated on in a future rant about Israel), and for children not to shun reclusive children from the "in-crowd" just for being shy. Not all reclusive children become racist; I'm one of them. Many people for the first several years of schooling aren't socially accepted individuals but eventually are brought around by people around them, or an even rarer "change of heart." Until children can be taught to love thy neighboor as thyself Racism will continue to flood the world and haunt it for generations to come.