> Do you really believe that’s what drives people?
I've seen plenty examples of entrenched prejudice in people against others that can't possibly have any negative effect on their own existence.
And in many cases it's very hard not to see it as irrational "hatred" where, as per GP's point, even just pretending the objects of their hatred simply don't exist would surely be a better response.
Presumably hatred for entire classes of people had some evolutionary advantage in the past (perhaps it helped with tribal unity/identification, or conferred success in waging war against other groups who were competing for the same resources) but it's pretty obviously now a dangerous maladaption in the modern highly populated/connected world.
BTW, I'm pretty sure most people (on HN at least) can distinguish between those that object to immigration on racist grounds vs those who have genuine concerns about how to integrate others from different cultures or with difficult backgrounds. For a start even just a single such immigrant is usually one too many for the first group. And the latter spend their time researching/implementing solutions, or personally doing what they can to help newcomers settle in while trying to remain realistic about the rate that can be successfully sustained.
> I've seen plenty examples of entrenched prejudice in people against others that can't possibly have any negative effect on their own existence.
Sure. But OP referred to "50% of the United States ... hating minorities." As a card-carrying minority who lives in a Trump-voting precinct, that's bollocks.
> BTW, I'm pretty sure most people (on HN at least) can distinguish between those that object to immigration on racist grounds vs those who have genuine concerns about how to integrate others from different cultures or with difficult backgrounds.
I think a great many of folks, especially on HN, cannot. I think many highly educated Americans who work in global industries have adopted a radical new ideology that treats multiculturalism as a fundamental pillar of society. I talk to people in that group who think the Japanese are "racist" for not wanting immigration. They don't have the intellectual framework or vocabulary to understand all the other kinds of conflicts--cultural, economic, political--that exist between groups.
I think it's much easier for me as a foreigner to understand how "50% of the United States" is responding to prevailing trends, because I just imagine what your average Bangladeshi person would do in the same situation.
> And the latter spend their time researching/implementing solutions, or personally doing what they can to help newcomers settle in while trying to remain realistic about the rate that can be successfully sustained.
But nothing requires people to support any level of immigration. Even successfully-integrated immigrants change the country. My family, which are landed elites from Bangladesh, has starkly different values from my wife's family, who are pioneers that settled the west coast during the wagon train era. And we vote based on those differences. We are the immigrants who changed Virginia from being more of a southern state to its modern incarnation as a destination for highly educated elites. In my view, nobody whose family is already in America has any obligation to welcome those changes. They're entitled to vote against cultural change, or against reduced political power for their cultural groups. That's just Democracy at work.
Racism (or at least a strong sense of cultural superiority) is almost certainly a key component behind Japanese immigration policies. My Japanese partner would be one of the first to agree.
And no, there's no "obligation" to welcome increased immigration - plenty of environmentally focused political groups demand lower immigration too. Indeed I have some serious concerns over the effect it has on poorer countries when there are so many options for their brightest and most motivated citizens to seek a new life elsewhere. But that's a world away from the dog whistling that goes on when politicians deliberately stir up racist sentiment by singling out entire cultural groups of migrants as being the source of recent crime waves or undeserved recipients of welfare etc.
> Racism (or at least a strong sense of cultural superiority) is almost certainly a key component behind Japanese immigration policies.
That proves my point--you're conflating "racism" with cultural conflict. "Race" is a construct in post-slavery societies, where animosity exists between people who otherwise share history and culture. White southerners and Black southerners are culturally very similar to each other. The animosity of the white southerners toward Black southerners is based on skin color, and that's why it's deemed illegitimate.
The Japanese preference for their own culture is completely different. Unlike skin color, culture makes a huge difference in people's daily lives and there are good reasons for people to prefer their own culture. When I fly back from visits to Tokyo, I land in JFK and am immediately hit in the face with cultural differences. If I were Japanese, and liked Japan the way it is, why would I want New Yorkers coming and changing it?
> But that's a world away from the dog whistling that goes on when politicians deliberately stir up racist sentiment by singling out entire cultural groups of migrants as being the source of recent crime waves or undeserved recipients of welfare etc.
The concept of "dog whistling" is just circular thinking. A study shows that, when you take Trumpian rhetoric about crime and immigration, and omit the reference to Trump himself, the majority of Hispanics and Black people agree with the statements: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote...
"We began by asking eligible voters how 'convincing' they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned 'illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs' and called for 'fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.' Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos."
Why is Trump's rhetoric "racist" even though the majority of Black and Hispanic people agree with what he says? Because "Trump is a racist." It's circular.
Illegal immigration creates real burdens on communities. One of my wife's cousin's kids goes to a school in the Portland exurbs where 30% of the kids are children of immigrants who not only don't speak English, but mostly don't even speak Spanish (but rather myriad indigenous languages). That creates real problems and burdens for the school. Why are folks in that community morally obligated to be happy about these changes? They're not.
Yes, I'm conflating them because they're the same basic concept - you think the group of people you consider yourself part of (your race, your nationality etc.) to be "better" than others, and anyone who belongs to a different one is assumed to be inferior in some way.
The Blacks and Hispanics that agree with Trump are just as racist as he is, so what?
I've seen plenty examples of entrenched prejudice in people against others that can't possibly have any negative effect on their own existence.
And in many cases it's very hard not to see it as irrational "hatred" where, as per GP's point, even just pretending the objects of their hatred simply don't exist would surely be a better response.
Presumably hatred for entire classes of people had some evolutionary advantage in the past (perhaps it helped with tribal unity/identification, or conferred success in waging war against other groups who were competing for the same resources) but it's pretty obviously now a dangerous maladaption in the modern highly populated/connected world.
BTW, I'm pretty sure most people (on HN at least) can distinguish between those that object to immigration on racist grounds vs those who have genuine concerns about how to integrate others from different cultures or with difficult backgrounds. For a start even just a single such immigrant is usually one too many for the first group. And the latter spend their time researching/implementing solutions, or personally doing what they can to help newcomers settle in while trying to remain realistic about the rate that can be successfully sustained.