Comments on: Bat's Interesting: Are Infectious Diseases to Blame for Prejudice?

By: Geack

Geack — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:46:42 +0000

RE: comments about race: You guys understand that one large group splitting into two smaller groups because of disease means that they’re all the same “race” (at least to start out with), right? Historically speaking, tribalism and xenophobia have had little to do with racism due to the simple fact that the overwhelming majority of humans have spent their lives with little exposure to other races.

By: John Lerch

John Lerch — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 14:29:23 +0000

This seems to be mixing up cause and effect. People uniformly waaaaaaaay over-estimate the rate of disease among identifiable minorities so that they can steal their labor and the products of their labor with minimal need for other justification. E.G. the alleged rampant disease among “niggers’, “chinks”, “charlies”, “japs”, “cunts” “kikes”, etc in our past history. (Apologies to all minorities whose disparaging names I couldn’t think of.) I’m appalled that SciAm and 80beats has indulged in this kind of racism.

By: Jay Fox

Jay Fox — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 18:56:27 +0000

I’m left wondering what advantage the bats are giving up by changing their ancestral behavior. They must have clumped together for a reason. Apparently, spreading out prevents deadly disease, but does it also leave them more vulnerable to predation?

By: TrembleTheDevil

TrembleTheDevil — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:00:57 +0000

This article traces out how this xenophobia could’ve evolved along racial lines – as agriculture created crowded communities that interacted with animals, infections disease would’ve become a much bigger threat.

Blue eyes didn’t appear until the agricultural revolution, and occurred along with much lighter skin, which causes a much higher rate of vitamin D synthesis since dark skinned Africans make 99% less vitamin D from the same amount of sunlight compared to a light-skinned European.

And fertile women have demonstrated a much stronger implicit racial bias against men of other races:

http://tremblethedevil.com/?p=2595