Racial and Political Divisions in America: The Lizard Brain

         I believe that the divide in politics is not necessarily caused solely by historical and philosophical happenings, but also in part to the prehistoric brain prevalent in most humans. The "Lizard Brain". The Lizard Brain is, as Mr. Stewart has called it before, is the undeveloped and more animalistic processes that an organism acts on to survive. This is the root cause of racism before we would consider race, and it is one of the causes of political division. From the documentary we've been watching in class the past few days, we can see that with the election of 2008, the political and racial divisions only worsened. I believe it was in due in part, to the lizard brain. As shown multiple times throughout the videos, there were multiple moments where white people, for seeming reasons unknown, felt fear. fear that former president Barak Obama would "reverse the tide" in favor of the black community. This was obviously false, Obama if anything wanted to set the economic playing field equal, but the fear in white Americans should be noted. If we look at this fear in terms of the lizard brain, in ancient times, if a subgroup in a large group of people has always been dominant, and specifically the larger majority of said group in total, and the minority group seems to be growing in prominence, it makes sense for the larger group to feel fear. though the fear may be misplaced, their survival may rely on that uneasy feeling compelling them to act.

Sources: The videos we've been watching in class.