Poll of the Day > Would the world be a better place if we were all the same race?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like the goo backs from that episode of South Park
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Possibly, but we wouldn't be human.
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Depends, what color would we be?
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literally hitler
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The idea that we could eliminate strife by sharing the same race or religion is folly, since eventually we'd just see new groupings possibly even based on sub-sects of those groups.
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Zeus posted...

The idea that we could eliminate strife by sharing the same race or religion is folly, since eventually we'd just see new groupings possibly even based on sub-sects of those groups.

Agreed, they will find something else to bitch about. Did no one read sneetches by dr.seuss?
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What if everyone was a Doge
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Zeus posted...

The idea that we could eliminate strife by sharing the same race or religion is folly, since eventually we'd just see new groupings possibly even based on sub-sects of those groups.

I asked if it would be a better place not a perfect utopia
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We are already the same race
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Imo the answer is obviously

Lokarin posted...

We are already the same race

Also this.
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Muscles posted...

Would the world be a better place if we were all the same race?

Nope it would be more boring.
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It wouldn't matter. Places that weren't/aren't ethnically diverse had caste or class systems to serve the same purpose as racism does now. Perfect equality doesn't exist in large societies.

Muscles posted...

Zeus posted...

The idea that we could eliminate strife by sharing the same race or religion is folly, since eventually we'd just see new groupings possibly even based on sub-sects of those groups.

I asked if it would be a better place not a perfect utopia

It'd probably be a worse place since multiple races means more genetic diversity. Socially it's not like much would change other than finding new things to argue about.
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Of course. We've all seen how peaceful Europe was over the centuries.
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No.

As others have pointed out, we're all the same species and that hasn't stopped us from murdering the shit out of each other; why would being the same race make things any more peaceful?
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yutterh posted...

Zeus posted...

The idea that we could eliminate strife by sharing the same race or religion is folly, since eventually we'd just see new groupings possibly even based on sub-sects of those groups.

Agreed, they will find something else to bitch about. Did no one read sneetches by dr.seuss?

i was about to post a video about them
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Nope, we'd find something else to hate. Like noses or toes.
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helIy posted...

literally hitler

rofl
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We'd go from racism to something like regionalism or sectionalism, so idk
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People would still argue about ideological stuff like communism or capitalism
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Lolno

In the context of the question, I wasn't aware that race war was the only kind of conflict.

That results in everyone being homogenized to an uncomfortable degree out of the desire to be normal or the inverse in that people look for minute differences to differentiate themselves.
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Not unless we were all Asian because the world is worse off without Asian girls
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MrMelodramatic posted...

Not unless we were all Asian because the world is worse off without Asian girls

You are a marvelous individual.
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Not really. People will just find some other reason to divide into groups and fight amongst themselves.
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FatalAccident posted...

helIy posted...

literally hitler

rofl

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I don't think most people identify others based on race on these boards and even still there are plenty of reasons to hate each other.

If we look at history, then we see that we got samecolor slaves, so having the same skin color doesnt change a thing.
We also see that it is enough to be born in the "wrong" family, just look at past royal families or the India caste system which they still use.
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To paraphrase an old aphorism:

Me against my brother.
My brother and I against our cousin.
The three of us against the stranger.

Humans only stop hating each other when we find something new to hate in common. Most social identity is only defined by its opposition to something else.

Racism is just one group against another, using clear visual differences (in most cases) to define that difference. It's the three of us against the stranger. But if we were all the same race - if we took "the stranger" out of the equation, then we'd all just go back to hating our cousin (whoever that might be in this metaphor). As a species, we will ALWAYS find someone to hate/fear/distrust, because there will always be people who are different from us. If we don't define them by race, we'll define them by gender. Or religion. Or nationality. Or political affiliation. And so on.

If anything, a better way to make the world a better place than making us all the same race would be to introduce a new, even more different race. One that makes "humanity" the overarching unity in the face of something "in-human".

Or to quote Ronald Reagan:

" I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."

Basically, we're never truly going to have peace on Earth and universal community until we have an alien menace to fight.


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Incidentally, now that I think of it, it's worth noting that a lot of our assumptions about "race" are actually pretty modern. Historical anthropologists are generally quick to point out that a lot of past cultures (like, for instance, the Roman Empire, the Persians, etc.) had almost no hangups about race at all. Because they always found other reasons to hate other people. Their "outsiders" weren't the people with different skin color, it was the people who lived in different cultural realities, or the people who worshiped different gods, or the people who had a lot of neat stuff so you decided to march into their village and kill them so you could take it.

Race as the defining characteristic of "otherness" sort of arose more as the product of globalization - as cultures and economies started to homogenize, the visual context clues became more useful for defining "other-ness" than more mental or social traits. Especially when there was an overwhelming drive to give an overarching cultural identity to groups that would otherwise view each other as the "other" (ie, the coalescing of most European nations into discreet socio-political entities).

Race is just the trendy modern reason to hate. We'll move on to something new soon enough (or maybe we're already starting to make that shift, all things considered).


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