Racism as a CNS disease
Racism, a disease that appears prevalent in society and across all countries, religions, and races could be treatable. The origin of this mental deficiency is rooted early in the development of human societies. Clans used visible surface features to identify friend from foe and this may have had selection advantages. Ironically, the features used by modern societies such as color was not present in the original feature set as it provided little differentiation and prediction power.
However, repeated conditioning of the brain to make binary classifications based on limited feature sets may have led to the modern disease state. Currently, the disease presents a lack of ability to understand another individual beyond a few highly visible features. At the first encounter, the brain classifies quickly (typically in a few seconds) and further steps in the decision tree are programmatic with little flexibility. This fast and efficient decision process may have been useful at the inception of humans but now it can only be viewed as a disease.
If racism is indeed a physical brain disease, therapeutics may ameliorate some of the negative effects. Its high prevalence requires a focus on further research and development.