User blog comment:Warmachine375/Why are the Faunus discriminated?/@comment-5426254-20150604031005

Hmmm... I think I can give my two cents (actually, two hundred dollars) on racism (or rather, discrimination, prejudice, and tribalism as a whole.)

In Earth's history, all of humanity once stood together as one group. Then we separated into smaller groups in the hopes of exploring new lands, and adapted to their respective environments. Some were warmer, some colder. Some areas were humid, some had dry air. Skin tone, eye color, and hair color adapted to these environments. (You could say that each person, depending on the region became more "tanned" or more pale over the course of centuries).

We forgot about each other and focused developing on all of these smaller groups, each group (i.e. Greeks, Native Americans, Ancient Africans, Gauls, Ancient Chinese) believed that they were the only people living on the planet. Then, groups started coming into contact with each other (i.e. Britain vs France, Macedonia vs Greece, The expansion of Ancient China), usually through warfare and bloodshed, repeating the process when cities became nations for the next several centuries.

Eventually, the Europeans were so technologically advanced that out of arrogance, and greed, their explorers decided to seek out other lands and trade routes to obtain resources and positions of power for their respective countries. Thus trade, knowledge of other countries occurred at the cost of making other ethnic groups playthings and commodities, either selling them and their forced labour for money, forcibly moving them around to unfamiliar lands, or simply slaughtering them outright for the next few centuries.

Helping them in this cause was propaganda that allowed racism (racial discrimination) to thrive. The European aristocracy spread this propaganda to their lower class citizens around to gain an advantage. It was a lie told to millions for hundreds of years; convincing the masses that these discriminatory behaviours were sanctioned. If the European masses saw that racism is wrong, then racism and slavery would have died out much quicker than now. And even after the end of slavery and the accomplishment of civil rights, many developed nations still struggle to develop healthy race relations.

This racism (or tribalism and prejudice as a whole), born out of arrogance, greed, a lack of knowledge of others, and fear, has happened, is currently happening, and will continue to happen for every country). Hell, this thinking even happens to its own demographic. Just look at the 1994 Rwandan Genocide; Rwandan Tutsis and Hutus, of the same skin tone, slaughtering each other. And it wouldn't be a stretch to say that every nation standing here today was founded through slaughter and tribalistic lies fed to people. There's a reason why the Roman Empire is mentioned in history books for so long compared to Carthage (Hannibal's town). It was because the Romans massacred the Carthagians in three Punic Wars, ending the Carthagians by the end of the Third Punic War, and rewriting the history books.

I can imagine something similar of the sort happened in Remnant, replacing skin tone with similarities to animals (i.e. Faunus) as the basis of its own racism.

I know that Monty and co. wish to avoid hurting so many people's feelings yet tell a relatable story, but like so many elements of the show, they are either missing, or are presented in a "tell everything" format instead of "show, don't tell", due to production constraints. And that's a shame, because I really would love a simple, creative, yet informative method to telling this concept.

Me personally, racism and tribalism are both stupid and everyone should believe and treat gender, skin tone, creed, ethnicity and sexuality, as useless pieces of trivia, and focus on building a meritocratic society.