New research has shown that monkeys exhibit signs of racism. It’s been known for a long time that monkeys form strong social bonds, organize themselves into exclusive societies, and even display hostility to “outsiders”. Now, recent experiments indicate that the monkeys discriminate against each other based entirely on visual cues. Rhesus monkeys were subjected to a modified version of the Implicit Association Test, a test that gauges reactions to pictures to determine if someone has any underlying biases like racism. You can take the tests yourselves at Harvard’s website. You might be surprised with the outcomes!
It turns out that the Rhesus monkeys have an easy time associating images of “outsider” Rhesus monkeys with images of things in life they consider “bad” (like spiders), but have a harder time associating them with images of “good” things like fruit. These results are similar to the reactions human beings have to images of other humans from different races. The monkeys harbor prejudices against “outsiders” that resemble the prejudices that humans have against their “outsiders”. This would point to an evolutionary origin to racism that may have started with one of our common ancestors.