Will racism against aliens solve human racial discrimination?

[Exarch]

racism and racial discrimination:

a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/racism

would directing our innate tribalism towards aliens-i'm thinking aliens who are technologically on par or inferior to us-solve racism between human beings?
a sort of 'my brother and i against our cousin, my cousin and i against the world etc' mentality.

Discuss

[Sher Khan]

Racism didn't stamp out older bigotries between different classes and sexes, I doubt xenophobia will get rid of racial discrimination. It'll only sideline it into a fringe topic that slowly loses air time to newer alien-human relations subjects.

[godol shmok]

The keyword seems to be "achievement" which is an economic term and refers to a 19th century idea of progress if it is thought in connection with "cultural", "individual" and "race". The individual is the subject here, culture the goal of the economic activity of the subject and race the determinative factor in respect to the faculties that code the degree of possible success. Apartheid was based on a 19th century biologistic concept to come back to the question. It dies with molecular genetics. We could investigate "cultural" "achievement" or "individual" and would recognize that they imply a specific historic understanding which would be hard to hold up nowadays, e.g. culture as a characteristic of the self-representation of a class of people which is economically successful. So racism does not solve discrimination, it just describes the conditions under which a discrimination takes place.

[TheTrainee]

It can't hurt things.

[godol shmok]

Racism is a bad idea for many good reasons.

[Holger Danske]

Racism against aliens sounds like a good idea, champ... Let's hope they aren't in possesion of more sophisticated technology than us...

[Helm]

What those Xenos need is a good boltgun round to the face.

[hellheaven1987]

Ordo Xenos.

Deathwatch.

And lastly,



Sorry but I cannot miss such rare chance for sarcasm.

[cenkiss]

We need a common enemy.

[Helm]

As long as they're not thousands of years more advanced than us in techology, and they most likely would be if they were here.

[Exarch]

As long as they're not thousands of years more advanced than us in techology, and they most likely would be if they were here.

even if they were more advanced than us, we'd still fear them and want to discriminate agaisnt them.

i'm thinking wing commander here; how kilrathi who fought with humans were discriminated in bars in 'fleet action'

[KaerMorhen]

Racism will preveil - we must hate each other or we'll perish from boredom!!!

[Habelo]

Racism is something good guys, it teaches us where our roots are and make us drink deep into history. And anyone who give a cent on how people look are also a racist, wether he likes the title or not. So lets stop hating and just give eachother the freedom to aknowledge that we are not in one big racial family, but in a specie one.

[eregost]

Racism is something good guys, it teaches us where our roots are and make us drink deep into history. And anyone who give a cent on how people look are also a racist, wether he likes the title or not. So lets stop hating and just give eachother the freedom to aknowledge that we are not in one big racial family, but in a specie one.

What the hell are you on about? If you ever suffered racial discrimination I'm sure you wouldn't have typed that drivel.

[Kjertesvein]

I'm not an expert in this but I read it somewhere: Was this not (one of) the idea of the Levant crusades? Avoid war at home, but rather find an enemy outside levant, northernaffrica, etc.......?

~Wille

[Cornelius Plautus]

Well, let's look at ethnicities' interactions with each other.

When the Greeks recognized the Persian threat against them, they banded together and used combined military strength to deffeat their common enemy. Consequently, there was more of a Greek national identity that formed a more intimate bond between city states. However, the Athenians and Spartans still fought each other during the Peloponnesian war, so even though they had been exposed to an external threat, their hatred for each other still prevailed after that threat was gone.

Or we could look at European Imperialism. Even though the British Spanish all the other powerful European empires had been exposed to powerful foreign civilizations (like the most famous civilizations of South America for example), they still fought between each other, as in the case of the Spanish Armada. Since they were more powerful than their enemies, the European whites were not afraid of their enemies, and therefore felt no need to band together to confront them.

If we look at historical examples of interactions between ethnicities, then we can see that no matter what, people will go on hating each other. The scale has increased over time: from the Greek cities hating the Persians to the Europeans hating non-European society, and perhaps to all humans hating aliens. (Make no mistake though, racism and hatred of foreigners has existed for other civilizations, like Japan, in which the results were slightly similar to those of the Greeks when the Japanese were confronted with powers such as the Mongols and Chines, though unlike the Persians to the Greeks, those empires never successfully attacked Japan). My point is that racism is racism, regardless of the conditions. Just because we would be hating a people alien to us wouldn't mean a change in our attitude towards each other as human beings. Racism is a powerful weapon, but is a weapon alone. While it can make one civilization hate another, it never has and never will put an end to hatred.

[Exarch]

Well, let's look at ethnicities' interactions with each other.

When the Greeks recognized the Persian threat against them, they banded together and used combined military strength to deffeat their common enemy. Consequently, there was more of a Greek national identity that formed a more intimate bond between city states. However, the Athenians and Spartans still fought each other during the Peloponnesian war, so even though they had been exposed to an external threat, their hatred for each other still prevailed after that threat was gone.

Or we could look at European Imperialism. Even though the British Spanish all the other powerful European empires had been exposed to powerful foreign civilizations (like the most famous civilizations of South America for example), they still fought between each other, as in the case of the Spanish Armada. Since they were more powerful than their enemies, the European whites were not afraid of their enemies, and therefore felt no need to band together to confront them.

If we look at historical examples of interactions between ethnicities, then we can see that no matter what, people will go on hating each other. The scale has increased over time: from the Greek cities hating the Persians to the Europeans hating non-European society, and perhaps to all humans hating aliens. (Make no mistake though, racism and hatred of foreigners has existed for other civilizations, like Japan, in which the results were slightly similar to those of the Greeks when the Japanese were confronted with powers such as the Mongols and Chines, though unlike the Persians to the Greeks, those empires never successfully attacked Japan). My point is that racism is racism, regardless of the conditions. Just because we would be hating a people alien to us wouldn't mean a change in our attitude towards each other as human beings. Racism is a powerful weapon, but is a weapon alone. While it can make one civilization hate another, it never has and never will put an end to hatred.

good analysis
+rep

i'd think that in the future, racism against aliens will be used to justify wars against them to divert political division at home agaisnt a supposed 'alien threat'.
the bogeyman of today is sometimes depicted as being ethnically different to ourselves

[Helm]

If we had say aliens living alongside us and as a result we had human and alien racism as a result rather than human on human would that have really changed anything?