why?

<font color=deepskyblue>Ignorance. [img]graemlins/dontknowaboutyou.gif[/img] </font>

<font color=deepskyblue>Ignorance. [img]graemlins/dontknowaboutyou.gif[/img] </font> </font>[/QUOTE]Fear of the unkown.. people are uncomfortable with things they do not understand

<font color="#f683ad">The only answer to "Why" is "Because".

and if you want to get deeper into it...in the early days of man, it was a survival thing..my tribe hates your tribe because you use resources...we want them so screw your tribe....</font>

Why? Because the human mind functions by grouping things and spliting things and catergorizing things. You only know a couch is a couch by basing your idea of couch upon your brain's filing index of couches you have seen before. It is the way we assimilate information. Absent racial prejudice, our minds we simply seek other ways to define "us" and "them." But, try as we might to avoid it, there will always be and "us" and a "them." It is human nature.

True, Timber, but it's not just that, I think.
The pure hatred, revulsion and disgust some people feel towards certain groups is much stronger than a simple instinct to divide people into groups and establish to which group they belong themselves.
Technically, I divide people into men and women (that is, I know which ones are male and which are female and subconciously make a distinction. Although I do live in Amsterdam where it's sometimes hard to tell ;) ). But I don't hate men or regard them as "the Other". What you describe is probably the first step to a much more complex problem.

<font color=white>

I think it's a combination of:

bad experience - something they saw that cause disgust, fear or prejudice. this can be from the television to rumurs to real life contacts.

cultrual shock - inability to absorb and understand different cultural habbits.

jealousy - envy is often a source of anger

bad education - though often not true but I believe it is for some cases. The behaviour of racism is lack of social awareness. But the existence of inner prejudice is for above reasons.

</font>

hmmm hard one, but I belive it is the way you are raised, if you grow up beliving that a dark skinned person is evil, they are a different color, so they are not like you or me, so forth and so on, plus say like a soldier who has watched his best friends due to a soldier from the enemy, then they become racist thanks to blocking their emotions, the enemy is wrong, so there for i am right and since the enemy is another race then the whole of that race are to be hated, * note, yes even americans have a problem withother americans, the north despies the south, the south despises te north, the neutral despies both because they despises each other

<font color="#f683ad">One of mans first fears was of the dark...to this day anything dark has an evil sinister reputation...this could be the origin of the caucasian/black disconnect.....If you think this kind of folk lore is silly...try being left handed in a traditional Catholic environment.....</font>

<font color=lime>Racism is fear. We can overcome fear through education. </font>