I don’t believe in any such sin as prejudice, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, though frequently that hatred can be maladaptive because a more open attitude to out-groups is more in your best interest.
In some circumstances, openness to strangers is to your advantage. They might have information that keeps you alive. In other circumstances, suspicion of outsiders is more adaptive.
How much anti out-group sentiment you should allow depends upon the situation you are in.
There’s no commandment against any of these secular sins such as racism in my Jewish tradition. From my understanding of Judaism, you can feel whatever you want to feel about non-Jews, just so long as you act towards them justly. Judaism makes dramatic distinctions between how you must treat Jews and non-Jews.
What people today call racism and anti-Semitism and bigotry, I see as conflicts of interests. Different individuals, different groups, have different interests, and these often clash.
Christians hold that faith in Jesus Christ is the one true path to salvation. Why would any Christian nation want to invite in non-Christians to sew dissent, ridicule and unbelief? Why would a Jewish state want to invite in non-Jews to water down its Jewishness? Why would any Muslim state want to import non-Muslims who hate Islam? I don’t see such policies of exclusion as prejudice or bigotry. I see nations acting to maintain their cohesion.
I can’t think of any examples where a nation has been made stronger by diversity. It seems to me that diversity only makes a nation weaker. Every neighborhood, for instance, that becomes more diverse becomes less neighborly. People primarily care about their own.
When in the 13th Century the English nobles bribed King Edward I to expel all Jews from England, they may have made a good investment in the future of their progeny in that Jews, with their superior industry, tenacity and intelligence, were taking over the jobs that became synonymous with the Middle Class — accounting, banking, law, medicine, business, administration, etc. The primary reason that Western Europe developed such a strong Middle Class was that all its countries, at one time, expelled Jews, thus allowing the natives to develop a Middle Class. Eastern Europe didn’t expel its Jews. Hence Jews took over much of the administrative, saloon keeping, management, medicine, accounting, banking industries, out-competing the less intelligent, less industrious goyim.
Australia used to be 99% white (at the time of WWII). Now it is less than 90% white and more than 10% asian and the asians are forming Australia’s management class because they are, on average, more intelligent and more industrious than Australia’s goyim. Why would white Australia want to import groups that would displace it? It might make rational sense for white Australians to want to stop further Asian immigration and further control of Australia.
In a free economy, Jews are going to rise to the top and command much of the country’s wealth because they are smarter, more industrious and more cohesive, in general, than other groups. Asians will also rise in their skill set while whites will generally outdo blacks and latinos. Without welfare, many blacks and latinos will starve.
Say you have a black neighborhood and whites start moving in, that will diminish the cohesion and identity of that neighborhood. Blacks will say to themselves, “There goes the neighborhood!” I suspect that blacks in general have a blast being black and are happier among their own group.
Say you have a white neighborhood and blacks move in, that will hurt the cohesion of the white neighborhood. In general, blacks and whites behave differently and have different norms. Blacks have high crime rates, they’re more expressive, more aggressive, more out-spoken, more loud, more free with their emotions and more present-time oriented than comparatively awkward fearful hung-up future-oriented whites.
In comparison with Asians, whites have the black traits.
John Abbott reviews Albert S. Lindemann’s book Anti-Semitism Before the Holocaust:
What then of Lindemann’s “remedies” for antisemitism? In his view, the only reason for non-Jews to oppose Jew-hatred is that they might consider the presence of Jews beneficial (pp. 11, 102). This attempt to reduce the argument against antisemitism to a sliding cost-benefit scale seems both mechanistic and uncharitable. Might it also be that people, Jewish and gentile alike, find antisemitism repugnant precisely because it is a vicious lie? And that people oppose antisemites because they try to play the majority for fools even as they subject a minority to persecution?
I guess you can tell where I come down in these questions. To me, it makes sense that people will resent those, particularly those in out-groups, who interfere with their interests. And it does not take the majority of a group acting in a particular way to bring opprobrium to that group. Consider Muslims, for example. Only a tiny portion of Muslims are terrorists and yet Muslims as a group are hated because of Muslim terrorism. Likewise, only a minority of Jews were active communists, yet Jews as a group have been hated because certain Jews carried out Stalin’s genocides. As for Christians, Jews still speak negatively about Christians because of the behavior of a few Christians in the Crusades and the Inquisition hundreds of years ago.
Few Japanese in America prior to and during WWII were spies, and yet Japanese-Americans as a group were rightly and rationally held suspect as America had a war with Japan. Few Chinese in America are spies for China yet Chinese in America are rightly held in suspicion because of the behavior of a few. That’s how reality works. Groups experience group punishment for the deeds of a few.
Generally speaking, in-groups don’t particularly care for out-groups. Anglos are about the only race that does not make strong in-group vs out-group distinctions.
There is no universally superior group. Different groups are superior at different things. In other words, the different races adapted to their environment.
As for whether it is wrong to hate Jews or blacks, plenty of Jews hate fellow Jews and plenty of blacks hate fellow blacks. Among Jews, there is an enormous divide between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Among blacks, there is an enormous divide between the talented tenth, who live like whites, and the rest of blacks. Jews and blacks with right-wing views dislike Jews and blacks with left-wing views.
Youtube: Professor Douglas Whitman of Illinois State University discusses evolution in 2014: “For the most part, each human sub-species was superbly shaped by evolution to be adapted to that particular environment. You can’t say which race is the best because each race was supreme at its own particular habitat. The Mongolians and Eskimos are superior for cold. The Tibetans are superior for high altitude. The Somali are superior for deserts. Pygmies are superior for tropical rain forests. Africans are superior against African diseases and Europeans are superior against European diseases.”
