Problem #10: Racism

Problem #10: Racism

Here's a big problem, but one with a small answer. OK, not so much a small answer, but small people as part of the answer: children.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First off, to solve any problem, we need to identify what its cause actually is. If you think that the cause of a disease is bad air, rather than germs, then you try to solve cure disease by moving people around, rather than cleaning things. In this case, the cause of racism is rather insidious, because it's an instinct: fear of the different.

Fear of the different is a very important instinct in animals because, especially if you're a small, prey animal, something different from you might eat you. This, in and of itself, makes fear of the different a very important, helpful instinct. Except... it gets misapplied.

Humans may look different, while actually not being different at all. The differences between any two chromosomally normal humans of the same sex are minute compared to the difference between any two given humans of the opposite sex, simply because men have a Y chromosome where women have a second X. But, and here's where things get complicated, people may look different, on a surface level (since, obviously, we don't see chromosomes with the naked eye). This can cause peoples' varied appearance to inappropriately activate the instinctive fear of the different, when there's no real difference at all.

The solution: raise children together, in integrated communities, especially in integrated schools. This way, kids see other kids, ones who look like them and ones who don't, doing the same stupid things that they, and all other kids, do. These kids will realise, on a gut level, that people are the same, no matter what the colour of their skin. They will understand, at a gut level, how stupid racism is- more to the point, racism won't even occur to them.

Of course, adults can screw this up, if they choose to teach their racist poison to the next generation...