Today's academic paper from my past is here. In it I look at how modern academic psychologists explain racism. For many years they pretended that racism was a form of mental illness to be found only among conservatives. Eventually, however, the sheer weight of their own evidence on the subject forced them to acknoweledge that racism in some form was in fact universal and normal.
This still however left the puzzle that some people appear to be more racist than others. Why? There are many pet theories about that now and in my paper I surveyed most of them and pointed out their flaws (which makes it a very long paper). What I pointed to as the best supported theory is that racism emerges as the result of culture clash. Different ethnic groups really are different in their customs and values so those who encounter people from groups with values that they would normally decry in anyone also decry the groups holding those values.
An excerpt:
More generally, in some cultures industriousness and hard work are much admired. They are seen as badges of responsibility and respect-worthiness. In yet other cultures, however, hard work is seen as something that any sensible person avoids wherever possible. When people from the pro-work culture are mixed in with people from the anti-work culture people from the anti-work culture must be looked down upon by people from the pro-work culture. For people from the pro-work culture to do otherwise would simply be inconsistent and discriminatory. People from the pro-work culture would think ill of themselves for being "lazy" so why should they not think ill of others who are "lazy"? To ask them to approve of laziness would be to ask them to be untrue to their own values and their own culture.
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