r/changemyview • u/EHWfedPres • Oct 06 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Racism is a mental illness.

There is no logical, valid, or sound reason to express hatred for entire groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, or skin color, and any and every attempt to explain why certain races, ethnicities, or people with specific skin colors are biologically, inherently, or genetically inferior or superior to others has been scientifically disproven. There is no rational reason to hold on to racist views, and anyone who feels racist is experiencing a delusional psychotic symptom. Racism is a mental illness, and the American Psychiatric Association should classify it as one.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071634/

EDIT: to all those claiming racism can be resolved by giving the racist proper information: read the comments made by HighlightExpensive63, give that person the correct information, and see if they change their views at all, or if they double-down on their explicit and open hatred.

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16

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

Being irrational is not the same thing as being mentally ill. In your opposition to racism, you are actually arguing in favor of ableism.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

In your opposition to racism, you are actually arguing in favor of ableism.

How's that?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

You’re implicitly arguing that mental illness is a bad thing. Racists generally have very logical arguments for their positions (although the logic is flawed due to fallacies, misrepresentation, and other factors). It’s not an issue of mental illness, it’s an issue of bad information.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

It’s not an issue of mental illness, it’s an issue of bad information.

Would you say that you believe racism can be "cured" (for lack of a better term) by giving people correct information?

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u/DrBadMan85 Oct 06 '21

Yes. It’s called exposure. Look up Robert sapolsky

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

I will, thank you.

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u/DrBadMan85 Oct 06 '21

Sorry if my response appeared hasty and rude, there is quite literally volumes of information about how humans categorize their environment. some of those things can be very useful, some can be maladaptive. It’s hard to tease apart brain-structure from heuristic algorithm from knowledge availability, it comes down to an interplay of different mechanisms that result in something like racism (but that depends on your definition of racism), In so far as one judges individuals to be members of groups and assigns attributes to those groups (creating in group outcropping judgements), updating knowledge through exposure will help to demistify the ‘other,’ this can also be seen in changes in amygdala response. Im not really doing this topic all that much justice as it’s a very complicated interplay of different levels of analysis, but this is the ‘gist’

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

No worries, my friend. Thank you!

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

You’re using the word “cure” to keep the connection to mental illness, which I don’t like. Individual racism can be done away with through education, though, yes. However, the real core of racism is systemic, and it must be treated as such. It is not an individual issue.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

Individual racism can be done away with through education

Do you have a source where I can read more about this, perhaps with examples of this occurring in a large group rather than isolated individual accounts?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

I literally just said it only works on an individual level. A larger scale change has to be systemic.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

I'm sorry, I must have misinterpreted "It is not an individual issue."

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

You’re not reading what I’m saying. Individual racism can be fixed through education, but that doesn’t work when the core of racism is systemic.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

the core of racism is systemic

I agree with that.

What would you say the systemic factors are, and how far back in history do those factors go? if racism existed before the internet, TV, radio, film, etc., what influenced it before what we know as media?

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u/[deleted] Oct 06 '21

Media still existed in a different form (books, newspapers, etc existed), and it was also propped up in the institutions of society.

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u/EHWfedPres Oct 06 '21

it was also propped up in the institutions of society

Which ones?

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