"We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure."  Samuel Johnson (The Rambler, no. 60)

"Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that carry them far apart." Confucius (from the Analects)

1. Racism - here defined as a belief or ideology that racial differences account for differences in human character or abilities - is an archaic social construct that has absolutely no scientific basis.

2. Prejudice - literally defined as "prejudgement" - is an evaluation or decision about the capabilities and character about another human with incomplete information to support any decision; often such assessments are made based on faulty and erroneous beliefs in the existence of an "average" value for the characteristic or race under scrutiny.

3. Bigotry is the personal or societal intolerance of some aspect of another human or group based on any perceived differences that may exist between the person or society and the subject group.

1. Racism, prejudice and bigotry are psychological flaws in human behavior that have existed and have been exploited for millennia.

2. Racism, prejudice and bigotry are maladaptive coping mechanisms for personal power and to buttress low self-esteem.

3. Individual psychological defects can be suppressed by law and negatively stigmatized by societal pressure but cannot be eliminated by these means.

Please examine the following characteristics and think of a race - rather than an individual - to which they best apply in your experience and judgement:

• good dancer
• aggressive
• intelligent
• fast runner
• articulate
• promiscuous
• thrifty
• musically skilled
• good swimmer
• compassionate

If you were able to summon up a particular race that you imagine better or more frequently manifests these characteristics, you are - be our definition - a "racist." What about the following list? When studying each word, think of male or female - not a race - and see if the behaviors better apply to one sex or the other:

• manipulative
• stubborn
• analytical
• athletic
• verbose
• warm and loving
• forms close friendships
• cunning
• emotional
• powerful

If you were able to conjure the image of either a man or a woman when mentally examining these words you are, by definition, a sexist. Let’s try a different test.

You are in a gymnasium and are told that your life will depend on the outcome of the basketball game about to be played. You are convinced (by whatever convincing might be required) that this is the truth. You have the choice of two teams and, if your team wins, you live. If they are beaten, you will shot immediately. Across the basketball court, fifty feet away, are two teams of 5 players each. They are matched exactly for heights and weights, age, and all other characteristics you can judge at a glance. The only exception is that one team is composed of black men and the other team is entirely of white men. Which team would you pick - given no other information - if your life depended on it?

You are at a mathematics competition and, again, the same rules apply. Your life depends on the success of the team you choose to represent you. The teams are both dressed in business suits appropriate to a competition and are, again, are matched similarly for age, One team is composed of all mean. The other is all ladies. Which team do you chose to determine whether you live or die?

Congratulations! If you gave true and honest answers (no cheating!), you have just proven you are a member of the human race. You are both a racist and a sexist, as are we all.With all sorts of mind games and self delusion, I suppose it is possible to really convince yourself that all terms apply equally to all race and both sexes. I suppose that is possible but I wouldn't believe you. My point is a simple one: racism and sexism has always existed and is human nature.

Now, on the face of it, this is heresy and I should be chastised and marginalized, especially in the hyper-charged, ultra-sensitive society we live in. But hear me out. Racism - as previously defined - is not "unhuman" or inhuman. It is a strongly ingrained cultural and societal part of human psychology. While it has not been proven, I personally would not be surprised to find that there is a genetically encoded behavioral tendency for primitively seeking out others of humans of similar physical appearance. It was (again I am presupposing without available evidence) in evolutionary terms, adaptive to protect the various members of your primal race. Early man may have raped and pillaged other races, but it was numerically rare for them to accept conquered people as anything but slaves.

When racism is systematized, institutionalized and made an ideology, evil is the inevitable product. Historically, racism as a sociological construct, probably originated in Europe in the mid-second millennium, circa 1500-1600. Europe at this time was a geographic area that became a hub of economic and intellectual progress. There was a rapid advance in technology, much of which was merely adsorbed from other cultures (gunpowder and paper from China, cereal crops and alphabetic writing from the Middle East, domesticated horses from the Ukraine, and many others etc.) and improved upon in new ways. (See Sowell, Thomas: Conquests and Cultures: An International History and Diamond, Jared: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies).

The assimilation and enhancement of worldwide technologies allowed for the subsequent exploration of the western hemisphere. First with Spain and Portugal, then England and France, Europe began its period of imperialism. As they explored, there were more encounters with people of unique physical and cultural characteristics were found. The new physical variations were thought to be primitive, savage curiosities and, tragically, "not human" in the European view of the world. The subsequent conquering, exploitation and genocides that were carried out in the guise of "difference" are part of the bloody and sinister history of world civilization. It was in this historical milieu that the seeds of societal racism was planted.

Thus, the nightshade of racism has poisoned mankind for centuries. Since the European explorers were convinced that technological superiority (at least in weaponry) identified cultural and, by inference, racial superiority, the indigenous people were murdered outright or subjugated, outright. There absolutely no societal (well, almost none) moralization of the inherent wickedness or wrongheadedness of such treatment of others. These people, after all, were "not human." Even more temporally defensible was that these people, if indeed human they were, remained "different." If human, they would undoubtedly benefit from "being civilized," i.e. made "more European." And, thus, the cycle that was to become a societal and cultural mores began.

The irony of it all is that modern science, including the mapping of the human genome, has consistently shown that we are much more similar than we are different. We have, generally speaking, 99% concordance among all people across the human DNA. In fact, most geneticists believe that there really are no "races" of the species Homo sapiens. In genetic terms, we are a "small species." In genetic terms, that means is "that the amount of genetic variation found among humans is what a biologist would expect o find in a species with a small numbers of member. There are more genetic differences among chimpanzees, for instance, than there are among humans, even though we dwarf them in number." (See Pinker, Steven: "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature") We also know that what phenotypical differences we do see among humans has been adaptive to ambient environment over generations. Blacks and, to a lesser degree, natives of South America, have more melanin as protection from ultraviolet rays in their ancestral, the equatorial tropics. Sparse melanin in people originating in latitudes farther northward or southward from the equator may be adaptive to maximize to vitamin D production. Skin folds around the eyes of some Asians may have served to protect the eyes from the winds of the tundra. Even less obvious genetic differences may have developed due to specific environmental pressures. One of the most obvious examples is sickle-cell trait which can be productive for some forms of malaria. We are, thus exponentially more alike than we are dissimilar. Yet we are not clones.

The sinister and, historically, pernicious aspects of racism occur when the individual’s belief that people are fundamentally different is allowed to negatively and consistently change that person’s behavior toward other human beings. When acceptance of unique human variation is transmogrified into prejudice and bigotry, it is something entirely negative and undesirable. With active racial prejudice, you have a personality defect that will interfere with your ability to function and interact in civil society and, if expressed in the wrong neighborhood, might get you killed.

Even greater still, the historical evils associated with racial prejudice occur when a society consolidates personal prejudice and sanctions policies that cause favoritism and entitlement for some and segregation and disentitlement for others. Slavery is the penultimate example of the evil and degradations that can be carried out on a societal scale with racial prejudice. The century of Jim Crow "law" and segregation that followed the Emancipation Proclamation was still societal racial prejudice on only a slightly lesser scale.

I am not unaware of the historical crimes committed when dominant races allow collective prejudice to inflict horrible acts against certain races. But, even in these heinous acts, there are lessons to be learned. Though it sounds like Orwellian "New Speak," the societal crimes of prejudice are most often independent of race. Let me say it again: societal crimes of prejudice are most often independent of race. Let me explain.

Clearly, the Antebellum South used societal racism to enslave the black race. It was a simple equation for the simple-minded practitioners: Black = Inferior, therefore: Inferior = Slave. However, it is also true that other human differences have - when sanctioned by society - been used to similarly devastating effect. Stalin's pogroms killed 30-50 million of his fellow Russians, Chairman Mao killed 20-25 million of his fellow Chinese, and Pol Pot killed a third of his Cambodian countrymen. More recently, in Rwanda the majority Hutu massacred nearly a million of their Tutsi countrymen in 1994. As I write this, the Sudanese Jinjaweed continue to turn the Darfur region a killing field. These were not "racial" murders; they were societal murders in the name (or the excuse) of Marxist "equality." Hitler's Holocaust was carried out on the basis of vague (though no less homicidal or tragic) quests for ethnic purity. Jews were simply followers of a religion and a culture but, in the hands of a maniac, it was enough. The point is that prejudice does not require physical differences to shed blood.

[Nota Bene: It should be noted, at this point, that while Hitler's homicidal quests were based on "differences," that the Communist "purges" mentioned were based on the reverse argument, i.e. that we are all the same and not different. Marx and Lenin had no need for race. According to the Communist Manifesto, the rich, land-owning "bourgeois" were rapacious and nefarious. Since all men are equal, the only way to wealth is through theft and evil. Thus, the sinister rich suppressed the needs of the "proletariat" and must be punished. The argument remains the same. The power of any perceived "difference" can be harnessed for lethal intent.]

The essence of my argument remains: that "differences" - be they racial, ethnic, class or totally fallacious products of a deranged mind - can be used to further an agenda in the bloody hands of dictators bent on absolute authority. The nature of the difference is really irrelevant to those who would seek control. Any idea of uniqueness, if convincingly "sold" to enough people, and made to appear to be a threat to this majority, can be used as a rationale to justify societal prejudice. The greatest horrors in the history of mankind have not been caused by war, famine or pestilence. The singularly pernicious atrocities of man have been committed all against the unquestionable uniqueness of the human race. Perhaps that is why politicians and scientists, even today and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, eschew declaring the singular and the unique and strive diligently and relentlessly to highlight sameness. As one philosopher who argued that differences in one human variability (intelligence) was simply a form of "elitism" naively wrote:

"Under a less competitive form of social organization, the theory of elitism might well be replaced by a different theory - the theory of egalitarianism. This theory might say that ordinary people can do anything that is in their interest and do it well when (1) they are highly motivated, and (2) they work collectively." (Putnam, Hilary: Reductionism and the nature of psychology. Cognition, 2, 131-146)

As one critic’s rejoinder noted: "In other words, any of us could become a Richard Feynman or a Tiger Woods if only we were highly enough motivated and worked collectively." George Bernard Shaw once wrote, to the point of fallacy of equality among all people: "Give your son a fountain pen and a ream of paper and tell him that he now has an equal opportunity with me of writing plays and see what he says to you." Historically, the uniqueness of humanity has been recognized by scientific and political leaders for centuries. In the most famous document he authored, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal." But, his private prejudice was expressed in a letter to John Adams: "I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents...For experience proves, that the moral and physical qualities of man, whether good or evil, are transmissible in a certain degree from father to son." (Cappon, Lester: The Adams-Jefferson Letters). Abraham Lincoln interpreted this Jefferson’s words to "not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity" but only to "certain inalienable rights." (Seventh Lincoln-Douglas debate, October 15, 1858)

While, in today’s hypersensitive climate, the world of politics and some academics deny human difference, I feel that a greater and more insidious danger is to deny and fail to appreciate the magnificent variability and nuances of individual human beings. We are all different. That tiny percentage of our genome that separates us from the rest of mankind is a precious thing. Difference is to be celebrated, not demonized. I cannot, for the life of me, see why living with the tenet (which seems self-evident to me) that people are uniquely different, unmatched anywhere on this planet and entirely unpredictable, is a "bad" thing. How can we seek "cultural diversity" as a societal ideal, on the one hand, and deny human individuality on the other? The dichotomy - this institutionally-sanctioned disconnect - defies logic and all rational thought.

Please don’t misinterpret my argument. I do believe that "sameness" - that glorious feeling of being part of a group of "similars" - certainly has benefits for the good of both the individual and the group. I have a family and feel an emotional connection to the members of that group. I am, likewise, an American and feel I owe service and allegiance to my country and my countrymen. But as a moral, conscious human I understand that there are boundaries between myself and any group, genetic or geographic. With a conscious and a moral sense, I am responsible enough to separate what I may "owe" to any group and what I owe to myself. I am "me" - for good or bad - and, at the core, I remain that person though the winds of "national pride" or "family honor" sway me, this way and that. We are all capable, thinking, singular humans. We are all, also, incomparably separate. We are all possessors of singular gifts (and flaws) that are reproduced nowhere else among the mass of mankind.

Except to the culturally blind or the most self-delusional among us, uniqueness will always be part of humanity. Individuality and "exceptionalism" is what makes us incomparable to the whole. There are those - perhaps, the majority of people - who would have us fete our "oneness." I celebrate, contrarian that I am, our incomparable individuality. The differences between us only become problematic when it become institutionalized. Ruth Benedict has said (in Race: Science and Politics) that "Racism is the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority."

When we, as thinking and rationale humans, allow our uniqueness to be corrupted into Benedict's "dogma," then - and only then - can our individuation become an uncontrollable force for evil and the tool of evil doers. To assume, as I do, that we are all different representations of the Homo sapiens genotype/phenotype, we open ourselves up to three potential societal ills:

1. Societal prejudice: if groups of people are biologically different, it could be rational to discriminate against members of some of the groups

2. Social Darwinism: if differences among groups in their station in life - their income, status, crime rate, etc. - come from their genetic endowment, the behavioral differences cannot be blamed on environmental factors (discrimination, lack of equal opportunity, etc.) and that makes it more acceptable to "blame the victim" and tolerate inequality.

3. Eugenics: if people differ biologically in ways that other people value or dislike, it would invite them to try and improve society by intervening biologically - selective or restrictive breeding, outright murder, etc.

Notice that only when prejudice is adopted by society as a "dogma" - a tenet of the group's belief system - is the danger implemented. The irony is that even if the individual pre-judges his fellow citizens with certain ideas of individual traits and tendencies - rightly or wrongly - they, in and of themselves, do not oppress anyone. They are simply character flaws. It is only when the larger society systematically applies these qualities of uniqueness that they become a social ill.

The individually held prejudice can, in certain contexts, have hurtful and vicious consequences. As we have seen almost monthly, the naked prejudice of man - when given a platform of public display - can have devastating effects. Michael Richards, George Allen and Don Imus have all voiced their personal prejudice. However, our society has displayed a remarkable ability to silence and punish such speech.

Despite the lessons that have been taught, I am convinced that personal prejudice is far from the point that it is purged from our thoughts. F.A. Hayek has written that there is "irremediable ignorance on everyone’s part of most of the particular facts which determine the actions of all the several members of society." (Hayek, F.A.:Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1973; p. 12) Faulty thinking multiplied by "irremediable ignorance" and its product, excogitative prejudice, will not die a quick death. If there is a pattern to be discerned from history, it is that such thought will simply move underground where it can fester among those united by similar beliefs and, potentially, bring about more consolidated and focused damage.

The argument is not simply that it is literally impossible to eliminate specific instances of personally held prejudice, but that the very processes created to do so (especially when governmental) perpetuate and, often, strengthen personal prejudices. A society that puts the total extinguishing of prejudicial thought ahead of freedom will end up with neither the absence of prejudice nor freedom. The use of force (other than societal pressure) to achieve the complete absence of personal prejudice will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

What are the alternatives? They are as they have always been: namely, complete freedom of speech. In particular, freedom of unpopular speech. The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of many forms of speech that are offensive to the majority of Americans. The point was made by Louis Brandeis when he wrote "Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from bondage or irrational fears" (Whitney v. California, 1927). And another Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote "If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought - not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." (United States v. Schwimmer, 1928) I will end my parade of quotes with (who else) Winston Churchill who said "The United States is a land of free speech. No speech is freer - not even here where we cultivate it in its most repulsive form." (Speech in the House of Commons, September 28, 1944)

Now, what is it that we can do when we hear offensive speech? That which is also guaranteed by the Constitution: speak back. Argue. Debate. Cajole. Parody. Persuade. We can also choose to simply ignore stupidity which can, in economic form, include a fiscal boycott. If prejudice is truly expressed (not merely as interpreted by the "Political Correctness Police") in the words of a political candidate, we can withhold our vote and/or work vigorously to have an opponent that displays no such prejudice elected. The point is that while ignorance and unjustifiable prejudice will never be extinguished, it can be fought and defeated. It has been, over and over, and not in just the cases of Messrs. Allen, Richards, and Imus.

Therefore, don’t be too very shocked when the next instance of prejudice rears its ugly head...or tongue. It will happen.