What fueled right wingers, fathers rights, mens' rights, gun rights & teabaggers into existence?

[davidn3600]

52. I've not read this book, but...

I'm not an expert in sociology or haven't conducted any extensive research. But I do have education in psychology. And I have done a lot of readings on these topics.

But it sounds like this book kind of has a simplistic view of the world in order to make an enemy out of a certain group of people.

I'd be shocked if that book didnt go into it, but I'm more of a believer in Trajfel's Social Identity Theory. Basically, Henri Tajfel was a British sociologist who developed a theory of social organization between in-groups and out-groups. Without getting too complicated with psychology here, he's suggesting that we identify ourselves to particular groups in order to appease the self-concept and improve our self-esteem. It gives us a sense of "fitting in" to the social world and we conform to the groups we identify with. And when we say "groups" it doesn't always mean black and white. It can be rich and poor, male and female, Yankee fans and Red Sox fans, Russians and Americans, Jews and Muslims, Democrats and Republicans, etc, etc, etc.... Whether we realize it or not, human beings like to put themselves into groups. And we frequently put our groups into conflict with one another in order to gain that sense of superiority. "We are better than them!"
We do it here on DU every minute of every day. We fully believe the Republican beliefs are inferior to our beliefs. Some here even refer to them as "neanderthals." That right there is an example of Tajfel's in-group/out-group bias. Through a process of social categorization, we create a world of us vs them.

So that I feel is how it all begins. And humans are never going to stop doing this. As long as we have differences in cultures, religions, politics, nations, races, etc.. we will create groups of social categorization. Your book seems to be concentrating on specifically the "white man" being the problem because he's the dominant in-group (for the most part) in America. But you look around the world and the dominant group can be anybody. It can be the Shiite Muslims in Iraq. It can be the Hutu's in Rwanda. It's not a certain race or gender or religion that is to blame here. This Social Identity bias exists in every single human culture on this planet. And being a member of these groups is not enough to satisfy that drive for self-esteem. You have to somehow prove your in-group is better than the out-groups.

And you can pass laws and such against discrimination. But that alone won't change the way people judge and categorize each other. You can't pass a law to stop prejudice. In fact, some psychologists believe that some people are inherently racist. They have a certain personality type that tends to identify more strongly with these group biases. And some further theorize it has its origins in our evolutionary history. So is the future as bright as this book seems to make it....Im not so certain of that. Im a bit pessimistic as far as solutions go here. You may have certain groups gain more acceptable statuses within the social hierarchy. But we are not going to cure racism and sexism and discrimination today, or any time in the foreseeable future.