>racial/ethnic discrimination: if an infant imprints (emulates) on someone
>with specific appearance, speech and movement that feeds and shelters
>him/her, and shuns someone who looks, talks and acts differently who does
>not feed or shelter him/her, then his/her survival chances are better.
>that's nature. then you add a few years of what the parents whisper into
>johnnie's and janie's ears during infancy and you get someone who is more or
>less discriminatory. that's nurture.
However, at the height of racism -- the days of slavery in the American South, for instance -- white masters' infants were often wet-nursed & cared for by enslaved black women. White infants of the master class then may have had more intimate physical contacts with enslaved black women than their biological mothers & fathers. The nature of racism, it appears to me, has little to do with Norm's speculation here.
Yoshie