Are Americans Racist? Well, Duh!

I often hear/read words to the effect of “the US is a racist country.” My response (sometimes aloud, more often not) is usually, “Yeah, it is, so what?”

It's not, I hasten to assure you, that I don't care about racism, but simply that I don't see any way in which racism in the US is any worse than racism or other prejudices just about everywhere else. And thus I see no reason why the US should be singled out for opprobrium.

(“Everybody else is just as bad” is not, of course, much of an excuse. I'm simply noting that when I hear comments about American racism, they are generally made in a context in which it is implied that there is something unusual about US racism).

I was reminded of this when I read this article about Buddhists in Burma killing their Muslim compatriots. As Protestants and Catholics were killing each other not so long ago in Ireland, or as Hutus killed Tutsis in Rwanda, and as Muslims kill Christians in a number of countries, as Serbs and Croats killed each other in Yugoslavia and both killed Bosnians, and so on. In the US, at least the amount of killing is rather limited these days.

As Tom Lehrer put it:
The Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
The Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews.

Prejudice against 'them' (whether defined by race, religion, ethnicity, class or anything else) seems to be a fact of human nature. I can recall in grade school and high school thinking that the kids in my school were somehow different from (and of course better than) kids in other schools.

I suppose it's possible (but not likely) that someday humans may evolve beyond such things. The best we can do about it in the meantime, I fear, is to be aware of it, so we can be on guard when it creeps into our thinking.