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surgical_fire • yesterday at 2:07 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

In history things such as slavery, marital rape, and honor killings were the norm.

In all places worth living we overcame those, and it was not something done irrationally.

Why should xenophobia, racism and such not follow the same path?


Replies

rayiner • yesterday at 5:18 PM

Those are all different phenomena that were eliminated over time for different reasons. There’s not an undifferentiated blob of “progress,” but rather social dynamics changing in response to context.

What people call “xenophobia” these days—which isn’t really xenophobia as properly understood—is just the flip side of ethnic affinity coin. If I come to America and declare that I’m a “proud south Asian” and indicate my affinity for my co-ethnics by joining various “south asian XXX associations,” then what reaction am I going to elicit from the people outside my ethnic group?

If you take a society that has been taught to abandon their own ethnic identity, and introduce into it foreigners with strong ethnic identity and in-group affinity of their own, you’re going to generate counterfeiting response. You can call it “xenophobia” or whatever you want, but the only way to overcome it is to strip subgroup identity altogether.

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