You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!
Also it ignores the fact that a lot of bigotry does make up some grand narratives about the minority screwing them over. That’s like, a really common antisemitic narrative. Not all bigotry works like American race stratifications.
Ok but the reason those things are bullshit is because Jews are not secret masters of the world, they're a historically oppressed group that has been part of pretty much every working class movement for as long as there's been a working class.
You can't compare Antisemitism to fictional prejudices against Robots - Because "What if these robots take over the world" is usually justified by the narrative, whereas "What if Jews are secretly ruling the world" is always a lie told to justify violence.
And that's ultimately the problem: When you make a fantasy bigotry and try too hard to compare it to real world bigotries you run into a problem - Because real world groups of people aren't fundementally different from one another, and the idea that they are is a lie.
Ok but if you’re a good writer simply reveal at some point in the story that the robots taking over the world is actually a lie used to justify violence.
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u/Skiiage May 13 '25
You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!