People often, in the act of being racist ascribe cultural practices to people of certain phenotypes. Unfortunately though many educated people are still racist. There are strong evolutionary reasons to mistrust outsiders and as high minded as people get, “awareness” and education aren’t always the cure. Sometimes it’s patience and forbearance.
Yes, that is definitely true, and it has been shown in studies that societies do typically push away "outsiders". It is true that in most societies, if you cannot adapt to the collective, you will not survive, and there seems to be an evolutionary explanation for why humans conform.
Being racist is not necessarily a choice - people are not making a conscious decision to be racist, most of the time. It's called implicit bias. Often, we are not aware of our biases, and we act on them without even knowing. If you don't believe you have implicit biases, you should look online for an implicit bias test. I'm sure you can find one. I have set them up for professors in the past, so they can do research on the subject. It turns out that when trying to associate positive or negative words with either a black or white individual, or man or woman, we have slower reaction to some pairs and not others. For instance, you will be shown a picture of a white or black male, and also a word; either positive or negative. You might be asked to press a button if you see a black man with a positive word, if its a negative word, don't press the button. For example you see a black man and the word "nice". Press the button. You see a black man and the word "mean". Don't press the button. People who are white and take this test, often will take much longer to press the button in this case. If it is a white man and a positive word, they press the button quicker.
What this shows is a preconceived notion about the relationship of two variables. This is a bias. The same thing happens when a male is shown pictures of either or man or women and a particular occupation. Men will associate a picture of a woman and a science-related occupation more slowly than they will a woman and a humanity-related occupation. This shows a bias that men are more scientific and women are more artsy and crafty.
Reply to Rushy's new post:
You keep saying this over and over again, but once again I have to remind you that it's not up to you to randomly expand on the definitions of words. "Racism isn't about race" is a rather hilarious sentence, which I'm sure one day you'll garner the ability to realize why.
Umm... where did I say that racism wasn't about race? Where can you actually pull that quote from?