If you mean then racism can be logically justified, I would say then you have limited acess to information or time to gather it. Lets say that for some reason nearly all fireman of a city are from a same race. If you are searching for a fireman but dont have acess to the information of who is a fireman it would be wise to start searching and asking to people of that race.

Is racism what keeps me from walking through the ghetto at 12 at night with my wife and kids?

Is racism what keeps me from going to the movies to watch a film containing an all-black cast, based on the history of rap music?

Is racism what makes me put my hand over my wallet when a very, let's say, conspicuous young man of any color walks closely behind me in a crowded store?

Or is this stereotyping?

Whatever it is, it is based on simple common sense and will literally save your life in certain circumstances.

How do you divide stereotyping out of intelligence from stereotyping out of spite and random hatred?

Is there a word for racism when it involves simply using history and common sense as a guide for the present?

Is stereotyping the cause of something, or the result of something? It can be both. Perhaps when the stereotype is "lived up to" so many times, it results in racism.

oooh i love a good can of worms..... as a young boy one of my first political stances was to join the anti nazi league (9 years old), however taking the viewpoint now, that my social conditioning took me down that path at that time was possibly one of the kicks i needed to start thinking, lets face it at that age you tend to join whats cool & understand it later (after all its the same tactics used to generate the hitler youth & its alive & well in society today), I then spent all of my years after that exploring the subject, even now i have still never seen a scrap of evidence in life that justifies racism, there are as many things in my own culture that i dislike as there is in others, i have no negative views of any race at all, i also have no negative view of the racists either, after all if the "powers that be" holding the strings of the social conditioning machine did not have a use for the racists then they simply would'nt exist, let's face it how can i feel good about being in an anti racist group if there were no racists to be anti to?, all things have their place, the real question is what will happen as more people become aware & educated, these social structures & substructures have deep rooted core beliefs that in the eye of the beholder are justified & require extreme action, this would just escalate the problems the world faces to apocalyptic heights if not controlled by the very means that people are becoming aware of, catch 22, you can heal the world but you'll screw it all up in the process, so the approach has to be gradual ...hopefully infinite ...it might be less scarey in the future ....it dosent look too bad on star trek anyway .....:shocked:

It is indeed true, and rather anoying, that people often fight for things winhout really knowing and have put some thought in why they are fighting for it. I remember hearing somewhere that then people are discussing politics with others, most people will use the emotional pieces of their brains more than the rational ones: Most people arent really listening to what the other is saying, they are just defending their side and probally nothing either side could do would change their ideas. This must be why its so hard to convince people to believe what we believe, or to be convinced