As the title says. Part of me thinks in order to be a blatant racist you kind of have to be a little stupid but then I hear of intelligent people inflicting racism and it throws me off.
As the title says. Part of me thinks in order to be a blatant racist you kind of have to be a little stupid but then I hear of intelligent people inflicting racism and it throws me off.
Comments
I actually think it is
Ignorance and and stubborn stupidity is a far different measure than what we’ve seen from intelligence these days. We’ve seen even Artificial Intelligence these days can be shown to be engineered to learn and unlearn.
>Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Racism isn’t a form of stupidity but intelligent people tend to be more covertly racist, I don’t know the exact article but if you look this question up that’s what I tend to find.
Morality and Intelligence are independent of each other.
It’s linked to a lot of things — childhood environment and education, lack of exposure to a broad range of people from other races, low empathy, high anger — those things still can be consistent with being very intelligent. Remember there have been very intelligent serial killers — being hateful and not identifying with others isn’t all about intelligence. The Founding Fathers were pretty intelligent but also kinda racist.
I would not doubt that in the US, blatant racism is probably correlated with lower intelligence, but I doubt that there is a causal relationship.
It makes sense to me that people who have lower intelligence maybe don’t have as much desire to leave their social bubble as much (lack of significant exposure to other races), and may be more willing to not question the racist stereotypes they were taught as children.
I think there is also maybe a bit of an ingrained classist notion in society that stereotypes poor white people (especially Appalachian folk) as being inherently inferior in intelligence and inherently racist (amongst other things). And now that racism is (usually) seen as a bad thing, the elites who control the media are MUCH less likely to portray themselves and other rich white people as terrible as a class in any category including racism
Not necessarily, but it is taught. So if you teach to put mental blocks in, its just easier to block out other things because of ignorance.
To a degree, yes. But not always.
People with higher education are more likely to not be racist, hence why you will find a correlation between liberal politics and places where colleges and universities can be found. By contrast, places without them or with lower education tend to lean more on the conservative side, which tend to be linked with racist attitudes and sentiments.
Generally, the more educated you are, the less likely you are to be prejudice against others.
Intelligence is subjective. There are so many ways to measure it. I do think there is a natural desire for people to simplify things in life and to figure out what they perceive is a threat to themselves in some way. Unfortunately the criteria people pick is not based on any facts or hard evidence. But it can make people feel better. In that respect, you would think that a person would be simple or lacking in intelligence. And that does happen. Simple and uneducated people can be racist. But so can rich, successful and worldly people. Those people are harder to explain. But that could be more of a case where they simply have hatred or disdain for certain groups of people. People tend to hate certain people without any rhyme or reason. So it is a complicated issue for sure.
I’ve never met a smart racist.
Intelligent people use racism as a tool to further their own agenda. That doesn’t make them any less racist, just more calculated about it.
Are the intellectually disabled prone to being racist?
Racism is a system, the level of intelligence necessary to involve oneself in it is irrelevant. Some people believe it, most simply benefit from it. Wether or not one is intelligent doesn’t matter when they are paying out dividends derived from cutting migrant labor pay rates because nobody cares what happens to brown help that can’t speak English.
You’d have to define racism and intelligence in a way that racist and unintelligent people would surely object to. In my opinion, the answer is no. Racism is driven by ego, in my opinion, and plenty of intelligent people have big egos.
Absolutely not
If I link it Reddit will hide the entire post but 20 years ago there was a study by Jost, Glaser, and Sulloway that defined and characterized the so-called “right wing authoritarian.” Not their leaders, who are usually Cluster B personality disorders, but the rank and file followers.
That person generally does score lower on IQ tests and cannot use what the rest of us would call reasoning. Instead such people rely heavily on procedures and processes, and most importantly, the authority figures who tell them what they want to hear.
That’s why it’s so easy to flip a stupid population like Americans over to fascism. Because stupid people are fascists, almost automatically.
Look, we don’t even have to argue that racism is stupid. Would you give your life to enslave others? One out of four of us happily would. Those are the stupid racists.
The particular study I name is “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.”
I think Elon Musk is racist.
From a leading, peer-reviewed journal
https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/is-racism-just-a-form-of-stupidity.html#:~:text=Longitudinal%20studies%20provide%20some%20of,and%20subsequent%20racism%20and%20sexism.
As comfortable as it is to believe that people who disagree with us or cling to prejudiced world views are more stupid than ourselves, this is far from the truth.
Unfortunately, it might not be able to be separated from a sense of community.
It’s the opposite of “one of us”, the greater the sense of “us” the greater the sense of “them” or “others”.
“I want the best for my community” can lead to genocide.
It doesn’t have to be low intelligence. Laziness can do it too. Putting people into groups and assuming they’re all the same is easier than actually thinking about the individual.
It’s probably like that meme of the stupid guy and the super smart guy agreeing and the middle guy saying noooo you can’t be racist.
Depends how you determine intelligence. Being able to think for yourself is usually a sign of intelligence, as is self-awareness.
But depending on how you were raised, you could have both of these and still have blindspots regarding certain forms of racism.
What do you call a racist that’s racist against their own race ??
It’s a result of learned behavior. I’m not sure if it can be blamed solely on the level of intelligence a person.. You could be extremely intelligent, but if you’re only raised and taught from one specific narrative, it’s all you know. It’s quite pathetic that in this age it’s still happens.
No, here’s my reason.
A smart person can be born anywhere in the world. If said smart person is always surrounded by such narrative they’ve never had opportunity to challenge, then they too become a product of their environment.
> Morality and Intelligence are independent of each other.
Saw this comment elsewhere and mostly agree with it. My exception is my example above.
Not really.
There are studies that show a correlation between intelligence and racism, but I think that just really that’s just smarter people are smart enough to never be seen to be ‘blatantly racist’.
It’s an interesting topic because it’s high-intelligence to be pro-social. To be nice to other races. To find common ground. But its also low-intelligence to pretend that there are no (meaningful) physiological differences between races.
Absolutely
It might be linked to amount of education. Just guessing
stupid and narrow minded,
No. Evolutionarily, we identify themselves as being IN groups then see themselves in opposition to those in any other group. Prejudice is rooted in survival. It is so deeply ingrained in us that if we are hiring for a job and know one of 2 equally qualified applicants, we unconsciously rate the one that we know 1 grade point higher than the other
There are some highly intelligent people who have been and are racists, in spite of the fact that it makes no sense in any way, scientific or cultural. It depends on their character, it depends on their morality, and it depends on their ability to have empathy for others. Even very smart people who have poor characters and no morals or empathy can be horrifically racist. Cruelty to others can be a cultural artifact as well, but that doesn’t mean that a person will approve of or inflict cruelty.
Yes, from the studies I’ve seen, there’s a correlation. But obviously it’s not a universal rule – sometimes intelligent people are racist, and the other way around.