1. Evolutionary History
Human beings haven't changed much in the past 100,000 years, a very long time compared to an individual's lifetime, but a mere blip on the evolutionary scale. Nearly all of this time, except for the past 12, 000 years or so, human beings have been hunter-gatherers. For such a lifestyle, in-group cooperation is essential. This cooperation perhaps developed into kindness, even compassion, for fellow hunter-gatherers of a specific group, even extending to those less able than others. (There is evidence for this.) Concern for others, however, apparently did not extend to those of other groups. (Once again, there is evidence for this: skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers indicate that there was a lot of warfare going on; it is reasonable to assume that these injuries arose during warfare between groups.)
What I conclude from this is that in-group acceptance and hostility to 'the other' is a strong part of our evolutionary inheritance, and one of the chief sources of prejudice.
2. Psychological Benefits
If prejudice didn't provide a benefit to those poisoned by it, it would have died out long ago. There is no doubt that prejudice can provide a psychological boost to the psychologically wounded. (In many cases however, the boost often turns out to be the poisoned tunic of Nessus, able even to bring down a hero.)
It is not difficult to come up with a list of second prejudice provides. The affected individual, feeling inadequate, says to himself, 'At least I am not that.' The classic case of prejudice, both here and around the world, is racism. (Another classic manifestation of prejudice is gender discrimination. These examples are alas! not exhaustive.)
I am pushing eighty. When I was young, racism, duh, was much more widespread than it is now. There were, back then, virtually no integrated neighborhoods. My family, composed of Indian, Black and Whites, would have been illegal in the 50s and 60s. The vast majority of the whites in the community into which I was born (Jersey City, New Jersey) didn't realize that the United States had a horrible race problem; out of sight was out of mind. I grew up in all-white schools. When I attended high school, a large urban high school, blacks were present, but might as well have been on Mars as far as white students were concerned. There was very little mixing, and, as I remember, the vast majority of black students were in vocational programs, and thus segregated from college-prep students such as myself. When I went to Germany on a Junior Year Abroad program, there were many females, but no minority students. Even at college, there were few minority students. Who can estimate the damage done by suppression of opportunities for those who had above-average abilities? Those with below-average abilities undoubtedly suffered even worse.
It is relatively easy for segregated white communities to project negative traits onto those who were forced to live 'on the other side of the tracks.'
It is clear that there is no difference among races regarding innate abilities. Skin color is the product of at least ten genes; skin color also came late in evolution. A scientist at the Max Planck Institue in Leipzig, Germany, fairly recently, was able to map the genome of a Neanderthal, which could enable scientists to clone our distant cousins back to life. There was even a woman who agreed to carry the Neanderthal fetus to term. We can be grateful that this hasn't been done. We can't even get along, on the whole, with fellow humans who don't look exactly like us; can you image the problems that would arise if persons of different example of humanity lived among us? We must remember that what we call race today is a social construct--The Amhara of Ethiopia, the Celts of Ireland, and the Tutus of Rwanda all belong to the same race--the human race. This fact, again alas! is not widely accepted, to the detriment of humankind. Why? Primarily because it gives one group the psychological advantage of feeling superior to another. This 'advantage' is, however, a false friend, destructive to minorities and destructive to majorities as well.
Summary: Racism is still with us! Let us all work together to diminish its influence everywhere!
