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Causes of Hate: Racism and White Supremacy

Hatred is a somewhat unchanging feeling of intense dislike for a person, unit, or group. Hatred is not synonymous with anger and disgust, which are rather fleeting feelings. While most forms of animosity may only manifest momentarily and slightly, hatred is a form of active, continuing aggression that uses up significant emotional energy. When an individual is hating, they spend much of their waking hours preoccupied with their anger, disdain, and dislike for an entity or a person. Popular societal forms of hate include racism, which is the belief that a person’s social and moral traits are preset by their biological characteristics, and the human race is divided on this basis, and some races are naturally superior to others. A dominant example of racism is white supremacy, which, as suggested by the name, is the idea that the white race is innately superior to all other races on the basis of what white people have accomplished. This paper discusses the reasons for the existence of racism, white supremacy, and the cause of hate in general.

Racism is a social concept that is not built-in human DNA and is introduced as people grow up. People’s minds are race agnostic until society corrupts it with the idea that all races differ. In addition to society introducing racism, there are other causes of this misplaced ideology. One cause of racism is the art of intolerance. Human beings have a hard time understanding and accepting a group or an individual different from themselves. Intolerance is a natural phenomenon or a self-mechanism of rejecting that which is unknown. However, with years of familiarizing with numerous races through limitless education and information, it begs the question of why racism continues. Up to this age, people have done the unacceptable by turning a racial group into an enemy; they have turned prejudice into art. This warrants pondering further to generate more reasons why intolerance persists.

Implicit bias or unconscious bias is a position that people hold about others. In simpler terms, it is a filter that clouds our assumptions of other races. Evidence suggests that a subconscious bias exists where other groups remember educated black men as having lighter skin. The implication of the results of this study is that successful black people are believed to be exceptions to the black race.

Scientists believe that racism is linked to the activation of the brain’s amygdala- which controls human beings’ response to fear. However, stereotypic images are the most prominent influencers of racist thoughts. Films, magazines, the news, and other sources of information support a system that feeds the minds of people with distorted symbols that define their perception of a certain race. This distortion creates implicit racial biases. Because being prejudicial is not socially accepted, many people in surveys do not respond to have any sort of bias against a particular race. However, many individuals, especially white people in America, have an implicit racial bias. They are not aware of the existence of the bias or how it affects their behaviors, but that does not change the fact that it impacts others every day.

Then comes ethnocentrism, which is the idea that the culture of a person and experiences related to it are the norm. It is the belief that the racial group an individual belongs is the center of everything. This is the belief that creates the basis for the idea of white supremacy. White supremacism is an ideology that is based on the belief that white people from European descent are intellectually and physically superior to non-white races and turns to white extremism by basing this idea on violence.

Another cause of white supremacy is the paranoid fear of the extinction of the white race. White supremacists use the statement “great replacement,” which is fear that the people of color will, over time, replace white people. This notion was found in a screed written by a man who gunned down 22 innocent civilians in El Paso. The phrase “great replacement” was coined by Renaud Camus, a French author who wrote about white genocide in 2012 viewing as an echo of a century of white supremacist ideologies. Although Camus distanced himself from the idea of extremism and the use of violence, he reiterated that he still believed that the white people of European descent ware facing the risk of being replaced by immigrants and people of color.

Hate, in general, is caused by various reasons that are not precisely similar to the ones mentioned about racism and white supremacy. However, they describe the activities of active racists and white extremists. One cause of hate is the general feeling of anger. When an individual becomes tense and has no outlet for the tension, they seek out a scapegoat, manifest their hatred for it, and then remove it from inside themselves in this manner. Surprisingly, the individual finds peace and experiences a feeling of unity once the scapegoat is eliminated. That is, till tensions arise again and another scapegoat is required. This clearly explains individual terrorists that have carried out hate crimes in the name of a course, but in the real sense, it’s their lack of security and belief in themselves, resulting in anger.

The second reason for hate is managing differences. For every individual, there is that difference that matters to the community. These differences include race, religion, and language, among others. Individuals and groups that can manage differences are those that have courage, have a sense of security, which allows them to explore the cryptic uncertainties of life. However, there are instances where individuals feel that these differences threaten their sense of self or their idea of group identity. Rather than embracing the mystery of unknowable difference, they choose to hate it.

When individuals feel powerless, unfulfilled, or disempowered, they rely on the energizing aspect of hatred. They redirect their pain to an outside, well-defined target. As one John Cohen says, “I have never met a white supremacist with positive self-esteem.” A person who feels empowered, successful, and motivated does not need hate.