Originally Posted by
tallison
Oh, I imagine you could make a normal/natural/"genetic" argument for most of our initial negative reactions to the strange and unfamiliar - *especially if it is perceived as potentially threatening*. There's the pragmatic problem of the persistence of such reactions when the reality of the situation shows itself to be other than initially feared (misperceptions of reality tend to lead to bad decisions) and there's the "social justice" side of the coin when a group with some "foreign characteristic" continues to be treated as a threat, long after they have proven themselves otherwise (and, in fact, are made vulnerable to the mistreatment that can flow from said misperception in direct proportion to the extent to which they were never a threat in the first place).