Quick thought: why are we more comfortable with our own kind?

In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the characters often say that they feel most comfortable with their own kind. Shapeshifters with shapeshifters, Cardassians with Cardassians, Klingons with Klingons. Apparently the future means that people identify more with their race, not less.

This never made sense to me. I never understood the thinking and belief that people of a race are the same. It has been my experience that people are individuals. I really wonder when I see things like the KKK or any group like that, if they are not guilty of what they hate in others. Racists seem to hate other groups, but it seems to me they first hate what is different. Even within their ranks, few of those groups are creative or challenge their own authority. It seems to me that racist groups, or any group that does groupthink, will eventually die from its own limited perceptions and repitore of behaviors.

Back to the point. Since I am white I have never felt more comfortable with whites than any other group. Its always seemed to me that by judging someone on external factors discredits what it means to be human. We have the ability to think, feel and challenge the evidence of our senses. By doing so we have achieved this limited level of technology. Why shouldn’t we look past the surface of things to see the deeper beauty? Isn’t it the human thing to do?

P.S. I was watching a movie 10 days after this post and it talked about “you should be with your own kind”. I wonder why I keep seeing this message in media? This isn’t the first show I have randomly chosen on Netflix that says this. Do you ever have words repeated to you from different sources?