“Racism is based in Xenophobia. The fear of anything different. This is at the root of almost all forms of racism. We, as humans, have learned to gather ourselves into tribes as a means of protecting ourselves. Tribes lead, eventually, to countries and other forms of large groups of people.

This is the best example I could find, but there needs to be more circles. Right after “you” should be “family/intimate”, the next two are right, but “people you just met” should basically be under acquaintances. And then you get various circles like “local groups, city groups, state groups, country groups”. The further out from the circle you go, the less trust you’ll have for the other person.

When people are divided into groups we instinctively protect and promote our own group, sometimes even at the expense of other groups. So while races are largely an arbitrary definition, it is one that we as a society have accepted. Which makes it so much easier to develop an “us vs them” mindset. Every time you talk about black people do this or white people are that, you are contributing to this mindset and advancing the racist narrative.

So my second reasoning for why there is racism is a lack of knowledge. The more you know about the differences and similarities between the races the more you’ll realize that physically speaking there isn’t that much difference between all of us. The majority of differences will be societal ones. I.e. learned behavior instead of instinctive behavior.

For example, something like “ebonics” has absolutely nothing to do with black genetics, but is instead a completely societal thing. A white person raised by a poor black family is more likely to speak that way than a black person raised by a rich white family.

The secondary reason is why I haven’t really ever been a racist. At first it was because I didn’t really interact with anyone outside of white people enough to be familiar with racism. Eventually though, I moved from New Hampshire to Saint Louis and had to come face to face with all the ugly realities of racism. At which point it didn’t take me long to realize that assholes comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Being black doesn’t make you an asshole and being white doesn’t prevent it. Nor is the reverse true.

However, we can’t solve racism just by pointing out the faults of the majority race. We need to treat all races equally. Which means no quotas, no specific laws mentioning specific races or sexes. They should all be banned and done away with. If a company has to have 20% of it’s workforce be black because that’s the local percentage, than that company should also be forced to have 75% of it’s workforce be white (if that’s also the percentage). In other words, if it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander. We need equality of possibility, not equality of results.”