ABSTRACT
This chapter opens by analysing the issue of the evolutionary biological and identity pressures that have marked the different socio-cultural groups that have constituted the human species since its origins and that are seen here as the primary germ of the construction of otherness as something threatening and inferior. It then addresses the issue of prejudice, a basically negative attitude constructed as an elementary and primary response to the intrinsic fear that the Other generates in us, causing uncertainty and insecurity, which in turn lead to resistance to the unknown, to change, to things and people that are different. The third major theme addressed here is that of the construction of social stereotyping, defined as the tendency to assign traits, either positive or negative, to an entire group of people and to guide our expectations or suspicions about that group before confronting the stereotypes with the facts. “Race” and racism, in relation to prejudice, ethnicity, socio-economics and power, form the next topic analysed in this text. This analysis begins with a reflection on different positions regarding the moment in human history when racism was born as a central structural social phenomenon in the creation of power and inequalities, addresses how racist prejudice is one of the central mechanisms that sustain racialised and racist societies, and closes with a reflection on how societies move from racist prejudice to racism.
