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I watched the movie Knives Out a while ago, which is this murder mystery movie. There's this scene where the family is in their living room talking about politics, and there's these 2 older adults talking about immigrants. They're conservative types, and they're talking about why illegal immigration is bad. One of them says something like, "I'm not being racist, it's not about race, it's about culture. I don't want all these people coming here and transforming my culture with their culture".

It's got me thinking about racism, and the observation is that it's not always about skin color, sometimes it's just "otherness". There's this other group of people that are different than you, so you don't like them.

When New York had a lot of Irish and Italian immigrants, a lot of Americans really hated them. Their skin color was maybe slightly different, but not in a significant way. There were all these other things that made them different. Their hair, or their accent, or the culture they brought with them. Inevitably, people who are transplanted to another place try to form communities with people that are like them, like Asian-American community centers or mosques. A lot of them end up living in the same neighborhoods.

And the people who were already there, the "original" community, ends up feeling like they're sharing the space with some other group, some group that just appeared one day. And some people end up responding very negatively to the whole thing.

It makes me wonder if the feeling is rooted in some human society centers of the brain. It's not hard to imagine a tribe of humans living together, and another tribe passes by, and there's hesitance there. Who are those people? Where did they come from? Can we trust them? Probably not.

The whole thing seems instinctual. Like, certainly in the modern day, who cares if some immigrants show up in your area? Yet somehow, people get upset about it, and I suspect that they're upset about it in a way that they can't put into words. They probably invent reasons to be upset. Or go out searching for reasons. "I bet the crime rate has gone up since they showed up", "I don't feel as safe as I used to with them around".

I think even in normal 1-on-1 relationships, we like to be around people who are like us. People who grew up with the same culture, or share the same beliefs, or look like us. The "otherness" hatred is just an extension of that, projected onto some group of people that aren't like you.

At this point in American history, we don't hate the Irish or the Italian or the Chinese, not in the way that we used to. Yet, it seems like there's still a lot of black racism here that I hasn't gone away. I don't really understand it.

I had suspected that as new generations are raised, old hatreds start to fade away. "Grandpa hated the Italians, because they immigrated when he was 30, but I grew up with 3 Italian friends, and they don't bother me none". And just like that, anti-Italian sentiment goes away as the new generation berates the older for being so bigoted about the whole thing.

But it doesn't seem to be the case all the time. Somehow or another, some forms of hatred persist. Or re-appear, in the case of some modern day rhetoric.