As someone who has been seriously hurt by someone else (they're in gaol for life) I know how hard it is to forgive. I still haven't succeeded, and I probably never will.
But, I have succeeded in gaining the knowledge that revenge would just continue the cycle of violence, so it's in my power to stop it.
Revenge solves nothing, and only causes more pain.
This would seem to be a solvable problem. We can break down communication barriers. The internet is already transforming the world in this way, and we've already come so far in the past few decades. Surely we can keep going, until nobody lives in a small corner of the world that's isolated from the rest of us.
It's so easy to talk with someone on the internet without knowing anything about their ethnic background. In fact I have no idea whether you're black, white, Jewish, Indian, whatever. So if I were a chauvinistic white supremacist, I could just pretend that everyone who writes thoughtful comments on HN is a white dude. This contrasts sharply with the real world, where you can't help noticing a person's gender and skin color before you ever exchange a word with him or her.
The internet also helps people erect strong barriers that might otherwise have been too weak to sustain. Stormfront.org helps turn potential neo-Nazis into actual neo-Nazis, helps them unite despite their geographical dispersion, empowers them to publicly boast their bigotry, and worst of all, gives them a comfortable environment where they never have to confront any other opinion. The fragmentation of online communities keeps prejudices alive in the gaps.
I don't think humans are racist by default, but rather that the way in which most societies have evolved so far are conducive to racism. Most communities around the world are either ethnically homogeneous, or if they're not, they have active conflict among ethnic groups in adjacent regions/towns/villages/neighborhoods. It's easy to be an armchair racist when there's no Jew within a hundred miles of you. It's also easy to be a practicing racist when other ethnic groups are threatening to kill you.
Historically, it has been very unusual for people of different ethicities to live together in the same block (let alone the same building) unless one ethnicity was regarded as superior politically and/or economically. Only in the modern world do Africans, Caucasians, Chinese, Indians, and Native Americans even have a chance to live as equals in close proximity. It is a rare phenomenon indeed.
But people do get used to it. At first there's conflict, but then a new generation is born who have never experienced ethnic homogeneity. The kids grow up playing with all the other neighborhood kids, unless bigoted adults tell them not to. This is the generation that can finally overcome racism. Not because they're better people, nor because they're better educated, but simply because their best buddy is red, their girlfriend is yellow, and their favorite football star is black. When these kids become leaders, and their racist parents die off, that's what a non-racist community looks like. History is made, one funeral at a time.
So the source of racist ideas is not some crazy dude with a funny moustache, but the very existence of homogeneous or segregated comunities. It is no coincidence that the places with the highest Stormfront membership rates are also the places with the lowest ethnic diversity. The geography and demographics of Montana breeds racists. Hawaii, on the other hand, is a rather unsuitable place for a person to grow up to become a racist. Even in other parts of the world, relatively homogenenous countries like Japan and Korea tend to be incredibly racist.
The only way to combat racism is to make people live together.
This is how I see it too. It has to start earlier, in kindergarten. By the time kids hit highshcool they already carry prejudices that might be hard to undo.
The best antidote is to personally know someone from the other "group".
The cliche defense for "I am not racist" is "I have a <race> friend, I swear". But there is truth in there. Having a friend, a coworker or acquaintance, is a good way to reduce racism probably.
That is interesting. It would be nice if there was a source for these ideas (well besides human nature) and if it was curable. We want to think these people a basically good but sick. Something happened to them and they became like this. If we could only prevent or even undo that.
Could it be for example that by default people are racist and will automatically dislike others from different groups (social, religious, national, intellectual, professional).
Hate of "others" is used for group cohesiveness.
Maybe it isn't them that are "abnormal" but us, who maintain that we don't have these beliefs, biases and stereotypes (at least rationally). Wouldn't that be scary...
Historically and geographically maybe instead of a sea of tolerance with island of hatred, it is the other way around. A sea of hatred and division with islands of tolerance.
It is also interesting that we often attribute craziness to these people. I do it all the time. They are mentally sick, they are hallucinating etc etc. But if you read manifestos of killers and how these people behave towards each other, how they function in real life, you might find they are are disturbingly "normal". That that is really disturbing to me at least.