The confusion is that we're often told that a strong national identity is important. But ultimately it's still playing off the same cognitive bias that racism often does - the "us vs them" tribalism instinct.
Just think about americans calling the french "dirty frogs" and how is that any different from racism?
A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that affects the decisions and judgments that people make. Some of these biases are related to memory. The way you remember an event may be biased for a number of reasons and that in turn can lead to biased thinking and decision-making.
Why is a strong national identity a cognitive bias?
> Just think about americans calling the french "dirty frogs" and how is that any different from racism?
It's different in that it is possible for a cultural stereotype to be observed to be true, whereas it has not, at least to my knowledge, been observed that individuals of an ethnic race will tend to behave in a particular way outside of a cultural influence. Culture and race are distinctly different.
Biased: unfairly prejudiced for or against someone or something
If I desire to paint my house but not my neighbors, or have my tax dollars spent in my country rather than another country, am I guilty of unfairly prejudiced thinking?
IMHO a more accurate description is "It's beneficial for me if my tribe acts to help its members at the expense of members of other tribes, instead of treating everyone equally" (which may or may not be true depending on the situation, and how influential your tribe is), with no value judgement necessary.
More lack of understanding I would guess. I upvoted your comment as it’s important to understand.
Racism and nationalism aren’t about hate. They are about pride and superiority. Nationalism is often confused or manipulated as patriotism. Racism is often confused or manipulated as pride in culture or the past.
The feeling of superiority enables other behaviors — people feel justified to take negative actions against other humans because they are lesser than them on some axis.
I admit, I lack an understanding of how racism and nationalism both boil down to "my tribe is better than yours". I'll go even further and question whether you just made that up.
> Racism and nationalism aren’t about hate. They are about pride and superiority.
Is this an opinion or a fact?
Wikipedia says:
"Nationalism is an ideology and movement that promotes the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people) especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland. Nationalism holds that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference (self-determination), that a nation is a natural and ideal basis for a polity, and that the nation is the only rightful source of political power (popular sovereignty)."
I see no need for pride, and a sense of superiority certainly isn't required - I find the idea that my country is superior utterly comical.
> Nationalism is often confused or manipulated as patriotism.
It's also often confused for other things, like a sense of superiority, or National Socialism.
> The feeling of superiority enables other behaviors — people feel justified to take negative actions against other humans because they are lesser than them on some axis.
Perhaps, but this isn't an intrinsic part of nationalism.
> These aren’t made up meanings.
They are interpretations, made up by the author who wrote the interpretations. If the word nationalism has been redefined (as seems to be the case based on comments and voting in threads such as these), perhaps we should get a new one to represent the Wikipedia meaning above. As much as people here seem unsatisfied with my willingness to hate others due to my nationalist beliefs, I refuse to do so to make others happy.
It's interesting how in this entire HN thread, the demand for racism and hate is far higher than the supply, and based on their voting patterns, people seem unhappy about it - as far as I can tell, in certain scenarios people prefer more hate.
