Charles Teves
- Racists will always deny that they are racists
- Racism is a choice
Cardiff University researchers have recently concluded that people who are under the influence of alcohol become more racist and homophobic.
Alcohol triggers people to vent out their opinions that are usually offensive to society, that includes hate crimes.
Jack, an Indonesian student told Metro.co.uk that he experienced racism when he was at a Wetherspoons branch.
“Two white men who’d had a few were drinking a Chinese beer and bent over to me to ask whether I knew what the characters on the drink were. I don’t know Chinese but they kept pressing saying surely I must know. Luckily my friend actually did know some Chinese so he took the heat off and diffused the situation.”
Metro.co.uk then asked people from a Facebook group dedicated to issues of racism if what the study says is true.
One member said, “Drinking doesn’t turn people into racists. Not only is that factually incorrect, but it also trivializes the structural basis of racism. Plenty of people get drunk without turning into racists.”
Another one said that drinking only brings out the racism out of existing racists.
“Drinking is not the culprit of racism, it may lower inhibitions and mean overt racism is more likely to come out but those people were always racist in the first place.”
GP Clinical Lead Dr. Daniel Atkinson tells Metro.co.uk, “It will impact specific regions of the brain which are responsible for varying functions and this will bring about a diminished sense of reason, emotions and inhibitions.’
Alcohol can also make people disrespectful towards other individuals.
“Depending on the severity, it’s possible that this may cause some people to ‘forget’ their usual morals – some of which they’ve been taught their entire lives.”
Rima Sani, a lecturer from Middlesex University, say Middlesex University is that alcohol is an instrument that allows people to let out their beliefs without any sense of filtering them.
:It’s not enough to claim to not be a racist because whether over the dinner table or on a drunken night out, your deep-seated prejudices will be exposed.”
Sani also say that racist individuals will always deny that they are racist, but know internally that they are, especially when it comes to particular ethnicities.
Kagoshima University researcher Amina Moss says that behavior shown by a drunk person might not be an accurate representation of themselves since science has proven that people are not themselves when they are on alcohol.
“Alcohol tends to remove a certain wall and throws political correctness out of the window. But it’s hard to judge a person based on how they act when they’re drunk, because of the scientific proof that they’re essentially not themselves if we remove all the good stuff, like good judgement, proper reasoning, morals and values.”
One Facebook user says that racism is more of a choice than a compulsion. The user also said that people who gave out racial slurs towards him were sober.
“Drinking doesn’t make you racist, or sexist, or a predator, or an a*shole. People like to use drinking as an excuse for their sh*tty behaviour because that absolves them from actually examining themselves or having any personal responsibility.”
