These Crows Are Not Racist Because They Are Not White Males

I Am So Tempted to Say that These European Crows Are Racists

In Europe, there are two groups of crows who are almost identical — except for for thing. Carrion crows are all black, while hooded crows have patches of gray. Each group prefers to mate with their own color. It sounds like what humans would call racism, but instead it's a lesson in the limits of anthropomorphism. ...And this brings me back to my earlier assertion, which is that this is one of those scenarios in animal behavior where it's extremely tempting to impose a human perspective and say that these crows are racists. They prefer to mate with their own color. The crows even have an actual color line running through their European habitat, dividing black from piebald. But the fact is that these crows' mating choices have nothing to do with a slave economy, historical inequalities between groups, or cultural conflicts — all hallmarks of human racism.

But if the birds did have slavery or inequality, that would obviously invalidate all the scientific evidence and prove that these crows are racist. If you click to the article, you can see the white feathered crow is the one accused of racism, which is what tempted the author. Perhaps if the crows were all white he would give into temptation.