What if there were no racism?

What would happen to the world if ever there was no place for racism? Would everyone live in peace? And do you think this would ever happen?

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As ugly and unfortunate as racism is, I don't think it's the main source of most serious problems. Certainly there are exceptions to this: slavery, white settlers v. Indians, the Holocaust, etc. But most problems are based on economic or security issues, and these are not race related in and...

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of themselves. That is, you could take race completely out of the equation and these would still be issues that cause social problems.

Another way to look at this is to ask: if everyone were the same color, race, creed, and religion, would problems disappear? Of course not.

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Even without racism, people will find other reasons to disagree.  There will always be some group that targets another group.  Racism exists because it accomplishes a function. It fills a need.  It allows some groups to gain and keep power, and it allows groups to build coherence.  In order for there to be togetherness, there has to be an other.  If the other is not based on race, it will be based on something else.

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It is certainly possible that racism might not exist in the way that we, as Westerners, imagine it now. In fact, it has not always existed that way. In the Chesapeake and the Caribbean, the earliest colonial laws governing labor made almost no distinction between black and white servants. This changed very quickly, but just demonstrates that race as we imagine it is essentially a social construction, imagined differently by different people at different times. This suggests, to me anyway, that racism exists because of its relationship to other realities in the world. It also suggests that if racism didn't exist, there would still be deep divisions among people.

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Racism is one problem among many.  There are certain aspects of society that could see peace if racism were no longer prevalent, but just eliminating racism wouldn't cause world wide peace.  I think eliminating racism and hatred are major steps along the path to peace.  Unfortunately, this is not the only one.

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No, the world would not live in peace.  There are plenty of other grounds for conflict.  In fact, very few wars have really been about race, right?  An end to racism would not end the problems between Muslims and the US.  It would not end problems between China and the US.  It would hardly solve any of the "major" world problems that lead to serious conflict.

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