It'd be no different than someone being racist because their father was a racist.

No, it's actually entirely different. First, comparing cravenness to racism is like comparing apples to a table: yeah, both might come from a tree, but the resemblance ends there. Racism is a belief that you are better than certain groups of people based on birth, while cravenness is a personal belief of an inability to handle things. It follows from this that the way one gets cravenness from his father is entirely different from getting racism from their father. The first is caused by abuse, the second by expression of opinion. Therefore, if a person can't get beyond the second, he will be considered closed minded: not willing to hear a new opinion. A person who can't get beyond the second ought to be pitied, though: his sticking to this belief is not the result of a closed mind, but of an abused mind.