Human beings have not always been racist. This is a cultural belief that has gone unquestioned. It makes it sound as though racism developed in the primordial ooze.

The idea that racism is in our DNA helps to perpetuate it. One conclusion of this view is that racism runs so deep that it’s inevitable, so why fight it?

I would suggest an alternative perspective: Racism is learned, and it can be unlearned. It is deeply embedded culturally and socially, but it can be unlearned. Race is a social construct. The amount of melanin in someone’s skin has no effect on their intelligence or potential, in and of itself.

I know this thread is about Germany, but I’ll speak on the US specifically since that’s where I’m from. Settlers may have been territorial and fearful of the unfamiliar, but racism didn’t begin as it exists here today UNTIL we needed slave labor.

Racism in the US developed almost exclusively as a rationalization so we could reconcile subjugating other human beings with Christian morality. If they’re not people, it’s not evil to enslave them — i.e., “they want to be enslaved” or “they would be lost without our guidance.”

Racism has stayed because there continue to be economic, political, and social incentives for it that interlock and uphold each other.