I think we're all quite racist at heart.
It's understandable and entirely natural to be fearful of a strange tribe. To deny these feelings only makes them manifest themselves in other ways. Only by holding our hands up and saying: Yes, I suppose I am quite instinctively racist, can we actually make headway on this matter. Let's own up to this thing and take it with a sense of humour.

I feel like a total pariah for even thinking this. I feel I deserve some credit for at least airing the idea.

I can't say that I've ever been racially discriminated against, but my girlfriend has a fair few man-hating lesbian friends. Every time I've had to hang around with them, I can feel instant, deep hostility. I remember thinking: Woah bitch. You haven't even had a chance to meet me and find out exactly what makes me so hateable. You just discriminated, and that's not cool.

I think there's also a slight element of 'inconvenient truth' to this debate. For example, it's well documented (no, really) that children born more than 6 weeks prematurely tend to have learning difficulties for the rest of their lives. But if it were more generally known, it would create discrimination. Schools would ask whether a child was premature or not, so they can stick them in 'appropriate' classes. Horrifying, no? And yet it's based on scientific and quite logical fact. It surely follows that a very premature baby's brain is not quite as developed as one who made it to term.

I feel sorry for Dr Watson though. The guy discovers DNA, and yet this is what he'll probably be remembered for in the minds of many.
(CerberaSpeedTwelve, Thu 22 Nov 2007, 23:08, Reply)