We’re clannish creatures. We don’t just belong to human kinds; we prefer our own kind and we’re easily persuaded to take against outsiders. Evolutionary psychologists think these tendencies were once adaptive; they helped people survive by creating groups they could rely on to deal with the hazards of prehistoric life, including the existence of other groups competing for resources. Something like that is probably right. But whatever the explanation, it seems pretty clear that we’re not just prone to essentialism, we also have these clannish tendencies, and each of us has a habitus shaped by
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