My great-grandmother was a wonderful woman. Her home was one of the warmest, most comforting places I have ever been, and many of my best memories as a child revolve around her kitchen.
My great-grandmother was also a bigot. As a child, she patiently explained to me that the Ku Klux Klan was a force for good (they built schools!). She thought that Brown v. Board of Education was one of the worst events in U.S. history, equaled only by the end of mandatory school prayer. In response to a horrific string of murders of black children in Atlanta, she commented that such a thing shouldn't happen "even to children like that."
My great-grandmother was a product of her time. The odds against a working-class Southern woman born over a century ago being anything other than a bigot were slim to none, but even now it feels kind of gross and traitorous for me to acknowledge her bigotry. She clearly met any reasonable standard for the word 'bigot', yet applying the word to her feels disgusting...
And yet it's true. I'm sorry, I have loved--and love--many people in my time. Many of them were bigoted against some group, somewhere. This expectation that "good people" won't be bigots is rather amazing. I came up in a world where it was nothing to hear the word "faggot" bandied about. Where those people awful human beings? Nah. Were they bigots? Yep. And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
TNC interesting stuff. Do you think it's a bad thing that we equate racism to being a bad person? It's a bit simplistic and often dishonest, but I think you could say that making that leap is one reason a large part of the society reacts with such horror toward obvious expressions of racism, in a way that they probably didnt a generation ago.
Well, bigotry is a bad thing. So yeah, that might be part of it.
Is there a term for a person who recognizes they have a prejudice but does their best to not let it affect their action and judgment?
Decent human being? I dunno.
I will say this: growing up in Alabama only a decade or so after The Bombing, I can look back and take it as read that pretty much everyone in my family - all plain old po' buckra from North Alabama and East Tennessee - was probably horrible on the topic of race. But also in retrospect, it seems like they were making a conscious effort to avoid teaching me the same sort of attitude and behavior. (I don't know any other kids who had the "Meet Martin Luther King Jr." Step-Up book in kindergarten.)
So I guess it's a little easier for me to think well of them, because I know that while I'm 100% positive they weren't above bigotry or racism, they at least knew they were wrong and tried a little bit to mitigate transmitting it to the next generation. (I still think things aren't really gonna shift down there until there's no one left living for whom segregation was part of their parents' living memory, and Jim Crow law is up there with horse-drawn trolley cars in terms of personal relevance...but every little bit helps.)
It may help in some ways, but I wish there was a better way for us to short-circuit the overly defensive reaction some people have to being told that they said or did something that was racially insensitive.
But to use the word "bigot" is so dehumanizing. Its shuts off conversation. Good people need to be able to express their intense fear of and superiority to gays and minorities without being made to feel bad.
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It's sort of like the observation made here earlier that there's a difference in calling a person's behavior racist and in calling a person a racist. It makes it sound like a defining characteristic, a way of life almost. Which it may very be in some cases, but surely not in most. Likewise, to call someone a "bigot" sounds like name-calling because it's always meant as an insult. But at the end of the day, there's no getting around the fact that you can't avoid using ugly words when you're talking about ugly ideas.
This comment brings to mind my Spanish classes. There are two verbs that mean "to be", ser and estar. Ser refers to the essential characteristic of the object. For example, If I say "Halle Berry es bonita", that means her beauty is an essential characteristic. If I say "Halle Berry esta bonita" it means her beauty is a condition or a temporary state of being.
In turn, racism can be an essential characteristic of their personality or it can be a temporary state of being that doesn't define their overall person. The adjective doesn't change, just the verb that is used.
An English construction that might suffice is the double-be-verb "to be being."
"Grandma is a bigot; I know because I heard her say that horrible thing."
"Grandma was being a bigot when she said that horrible thing."
I think it would be sufficient to say something along the lines of "Grandma held some bigoted beliefs" rather than "Grandma was a bigot." Calling someone the B word still implies an active, hateful approach to life.
wallyz,
Are you bloody serious? How about this: "Good people" need to feel bad about their intense fear of and superiority to anybody. Jeez.
Um, I'm pretty sure wallyz was using sarcasm to criticize the hypersensitivity of those who claim that pointing out bigoted speech/behavior "shuts down the conversation."
Yes, yes I was. Thank you Betsy. Joyce, I think these comments are best read with a sarcasm and irony detector turned on.
Apparently my late grandmother was horrified at the prospect of my going to Smith College, because she'd been told the place was crawling with lesbians (this was, apparently, quite the family scandal, no wonder they were so happy when I got a boyfriend...). I for one have no problem saying she was a bigot on that scale, and she's the person I miss most in the world.
I think this is where a lot of the hue and cry about "playing the racism card" comes from.
There's a disconnect between the commonality of bigotry and how we thing we should feel about bigots (racial or otherwise). On one hand, most of us know bigots of one variety or other (and if we were really being honest would probably need to acknowledge that we're a bit bigoted ourselves, whether it's racial, gender, sexual preference, religion or something else entirely).
At the same time as being relatively commonplace, the social consensus (at least as I perceive it) is that bigots ought to be reviled and ostracized. Calling someone a bigot doesn't function as a corrective to attitudes or behavior, but is thought of as a pretty profound indictment of one's character. It puts people's backs up, and it's no surprise that most people aren't interested in doing that to people they know and love.
Bigots are not bigots UNTIL they ACT in the way that allows someone else to observe their bigotry. Being offended because one is personally singled out for bigoted behavior, (while others who may feel similarly are not) is simply the mechanism that society uses to change behaviors among its members. Replace bigotry or racism with some other act of greater or lesser revulsion (spitting, at one end Rape at the other?). The negative assessment of your character is just the price one pays for doing what you did when the society shifts its perspective on that act and YOU are slow to follow.
The observation that it is the commonality of bigotry is the fulcrum that one should use in thinking about this. Today, the idea of a spitoon in a hotel lobby or a bar is simply nauseating to many. A hundred years ago class, elegance, and style were signified by having a "really nice " one. A hundred and fifty years ago wealthy men with the means to do so, sometimes offered male visitors "the pleasures of the slave row". Today, who thinks of that as anything but dehumanizing rape? As the society evolves the opinion of any act moves with it. That bigots and racists "get their backs up" at being recognized as such, is entirely appropriate. In order to NOT be called a bigot or racist, one should conform one's behavior to what your societal surround feels is NOT bigoted. When your (for your local community) ostensibly non bigoted behavior is identified as such in the larger community, you are SUPPOSED to feel badly (and modify your behavior accordingly).
One doesn't have to call out family for their bigotry, but you SHOULD, if you love them.
In the words of Kurt Angle, "It's true, it's true."
I remember watching In Living Color's "Men on Film/TV" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMLvWX9DtGs) with my Dad. We were watching it on video tape and I paused the show and asked my old man, "Dad, will we look back on this one day and put this in the same category as Amos & Andy?" He thought for a second and said, "Probably" and then we went back to watch the show and laughing our asses off.
I wish I could say that we were laughing at a post-modern take on stereotypes, but the truth is that we were just laughing at a comedians making fun of gays. Does it make me an irredeemably bad person? No, but it did make me a bigot.
That's one reason I liked the movie Bruno (aside from the fact that it was simply hilarious). It just put all the stereotypes out there, without any regard to political correctness or attempts at sensitivity. You could just laugh at how insane and ridiculous it is. Very cathartic.
I laughed my ass off at those too and I'm gay. I found it funny cause I actually shared that view point on a lot of films. Something with no cute guys in it, "hated it". :)
The film reviews I really miss are the ones that used to be on the Daily Show by Frank DeCaro. I still laugh every time I remember his review of Fellowship of the Ring. "Last time I found a ring in the dark I chipped a tooth on it."
Of course mining stereotypes for humor is tough and risky cause if you do it wrong it ends up just being malicious.
Frank DeCaro's "Out at the Movies"! I loved that segment too. I've heard he has a show on Sirius satellite radio these days. Not a subscriber, so I have no idea what it's like.
One clarification I'd make is: all these sweet, lovely homophobes and racists, etc., who aren't awful human beings? They aren't awful human beings to *you,* who love them and vice versa; but those of us on the receiving end of the bigotry must beg to differ.
We're all awful human beings.
and we're all lovely, beautiful human beings.
I like these two comments, one after the other! Ah, the truth.
I sometimes wonder if this isn't one of the fundamental differences between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives elevate the importance of being kind and loving and generous to those they know personally; liberals don't much care if anyone's an asshole personally, so long as everyone's got the same rights and opportunities.
I call this the "concentric circle approach to morality." Some people see the world almost like they are at the center of a series of concentric circles; they treat the people in the circle closest to them with great care and concern; the further out you get, the more that this care and concern diminishes. People in the outermost circles are given no regard at all. That kind of thinking explains why, for example, some people feel that a man who cheats on his wife could not possibly be a trustworthy president; if he treats someone in his inner circle that poorly, how will he treat the rest of us? They can't see that some people just don't operate that way, and may be highly ethical towards people or groups that are not close to them while being not particularly nice to their own family members.
Amusingly, conservatives think the same thing except the swap the words conservative and liberal.
For an example look at their "anti-PC" stuff. I think that thinking what you just wrote may be a fundamental part of what makes an american an american. Our patronizing attitudes towards each other are expressed in the same language.
We really are alike in our common humanity.
I find the exercise of that substitution interesting. I'll do it explicitly:
"Conservatives elevate the importance of being kind and loving and generous to those they know personally; liberals don't much care if anyone's an asshole personally, so long as everyone's got the same rights and opportunities."
versus...
Liberals elevate the importance of being kind and loving and generous to those they know personally; conservatives don't much care if anyone's an asshole personally, so long as everyone's got the same rights and opportunities.
I would venture to say that liberals don't limit the importance of being kind, to those they know personally. I'd say, and I'm sure some will disagree, that liberals value being empathetic (often "kind and loving and generous") to everyone, but feel philosophically that you have the right to be an asshole as long as you are not harming someone else.
I will also expose my own prejudice by saying, as a vast over-generalization (at least partly supported by the research of Jonathan Haidt), that conservatives see being respectful to certain groups as a moral issue, such as one's parents or those in authority. They don't necessarily feel the same morals apply to interactions with other groups.
Of course, in evaluating these things, one must make distinctions between the majority of people identifying themselves as "conservative" or "liberal" versus the actual plethora of political ideologies that make up both groups. I'd also imagine that it might be easier to do among the group I think I belong to than with a potentially monolithic "other."
I just don't see that, TPG. Who wants gays, for example, to have the same rights? Conservatives might be v. loving to the gay couple down the street, and generous in any number of ways, but they're still the ones who don't want to extend equal rights to them.
I'm refernce how they act. I'm reference what they say and how they see themselves.
If you want to draw parallels, try this one:
Conservatives tend toward bigotry. Liberals tend toward snobbery. Both are failings stemming from a similar weakness of character, just expressed in slightly different ways.
Yesterday in the middle of a thoughtful discussion on the near universality of human failings, I made fun of a dude for his grammar. Hows that for irony.
I would also add that I think every single person has their prejudices and can, at times, be a bigot. I think it's inescapable. Think of it like this: Christians believe it is impossible to be sinless. No matter how virtuous or careful one is.
Jesus: Let he among you who is without sin, cast the first stone.
Bigots: [cast cast cast cast cast]
I second this. I'm all for not shutting down discussion, and maybe picking battles and NOT using labels (e.g., bigot) when an opportunity to have a real discussion that might bring forth change occurs. But we have to remember that the expression of bigotry, no matter the source, just as much indicts the character, the very being, of its object. It wounds people deeply.
I think the fact that it has become so socially unacceptable (in many, many circles) to express bigoted attitudes is a positive thing. Maybe people just keep it under wraps. But at least it means that these deeply wounding things aren't just casually flying out there, hitting whoever - gays, blacks, women - might be within earshot.
We need to keep in mind the difference between denotation and connotation. The word "bigotry" has come to be used as an umbrella term for all the different forms of prejudice, most notably racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and homophobia. But "bigot" has a connotation of someone who is obsessively against a particular group. It is built into the history of the word, which once simply referred to a religious zealot or hypocrite. The problem is that it's possible for a person to have elements of racism, anti-Semitism, etc., without being obsessive or zealous about it, or filled with "hate."
Earlier this year Melissa Etheridge argued that many people who oppose gay marriage aren't hateful, but are simply afraid of change. That's an important distinction to keep in mind, but it's one that the word "bigot" glosses over. You can attempt to demystify bigotry by saying many good, decent people are bigots, but you're fighting against connotations that are deeply lodged in the way the word has long been used, and continues to be used.
It's also important to realize that "bigotry", "racism", and "ignorance" are 3 distinctly different states of being.
Racism (or being a racist)- is the act or participation in oppression;
Bigotry - is the passive hatred of another person based on some percieved difference;
Ignorance - is having racist or bigoted views without a basis of understanding, knowledge, or comparison.
Ignorance surrounds us and is easily forgiven.
Among some of the older people I know, throughout their lives they have been taught and believed that homosexuality is wrong and sinful, and now many people are saying it isn't. I think for some of them, it's hard to wrap their head around that.
"And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them."
TNC--full-on props for that. I did exactly the same thing, back in the day. I was wrong. But I think that the commenters above are onto something--a person who holds bigoted beliefs is not necessarily a true bigot. Most of it is circumstance of birth--place, time, culture, family, etc. In fact, I would say that there are comparably few real bigots running around--those who internalize hate as Truth.
If the goal is to end a majority's dehumanization of a minority, it's hard to accomplish this by...dehumanizing the majority. Too often those who loudly condemn bigotry against this or that 'group' then turn around and reflexively label vast numbers of people as bigots--lumping them into a group, dehumanizing them. The only thing this does is ramp up the hatred.
With patience, time, and hard work, most people can be moved away from, or grow out of, bigoted beliefs. The hard, stunted core that remains (like the KKK), are the true bigots who will never change. But there's no need to label them as such, because its self-evident to everyone with a brain.
I'm willing to call bigotry what it is, but I appreciate TNCs remark and dislike the response of some of the people on this thread, who are still trying to preserve the use of the term "bigot" as an us-and-them, good-guy/bad-guy term of opprobrium. You've gone to a reverse version of the "true Scotsman" fallacy (the "true bigot".) Not only is it unproductive, it shows a failure to appreciate how bigotry is deeply enmeshed in the structural context of peoples' lives.
It's almost always selective, too. When it is an Archie Bunker caricature, and the source (and likely audience) of the condemnation is not a white, working-class (or below) guy, then it's the term "bigot" is thrown around with ease. When used to describe, for example, hostility to gays and lesbians from immigrants or from a minority group, then it's all nuanced and contextual and historicized. Or, perhaps, vice-versa. This is the consequence of trying to distinguish between the "incidental" bigot and the essential one - it provides too much cover for inconsistent and sloppy thinking.
One problem is that so many people think that they're _not_ bigots. Bigots and racists are the other. Not me, and not mine. We're good people.
I went off on a few rants about this on TNC's old blog, but I kinda wish we could 'normalize' the labels of bigotry and racism. I'm racist. I know that. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed, either; it's an imperfection in me, and in the culture in which I was raised, that I try to address. If I didn't see it, I wouldn't be able to try to address it. If I were ashamed, I'd spend more effort denying it. I am who I am, and I've gotta know that before I try bettering myself.
I agree; denial is an impediment to change. It seems as if there are two types of people who admit to being bigoted: those who are proud of it and don't intend to change, and those who acknowledge it precisely because they want to change.
On self identifying as a bigot-my sister's ex boyfriend would often say that it was acceptable for him as a white man to make jokes about people of other races or sexual orientations because he knew that all people were somewhat bigoted and thus no one should be criticized for bigoted behavior if they intended not to be taken very seriously. To me that kind of attitude is like saying that all people have moments where they want to punch someone in the face, so if you go around punching others in the face but believe that you dont mean it in a damaging way you're AOK you don't need to stop at all to consider where your urge to punch others comes from or what potential damage it can cause.
I think, while of course what you say is true--we all have had those experiences--that far more people are simply prey to ignorant stereotypes, often stereotypes that are culturally accepted or used as shorthand in popular media--that can be easily manipulated in political situations, conferring and denying privilege, resulting in institutionalized bigotry. What's more the brainwashing is so continuous and ongoing that it would almost take a saint to overcome it--"I have nothing against gay people, but I don't think that they should be teaching a pro gay agenda to school children," which is why, I believe, we have this phenomenon of pervasive bigotry while folks universally deny that they, themselves, are actually bigoted.
I can not think of one instance before yesterday in which a mass murderer in the US, and there have been many who have gone on such killing sprees, was a Muslim, but I can just imagine what Muslim Americans are thinking in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre. Do people here remember the initial reaction to the Oklahoma City bombing? And I guarantee you that most of those who react to the tragedy with their stereotypes of Muslims reinforce would never consider themselves anything other than reasonable, non bigoted people.
"I can not think of one instance before yesterday in which a mass murderer in the US, and there have been many who have gone on such killing sprees, was a Muslim . . . "
John Allen Muhammed - the DC sniper.
The interesting thing about the DC sniper is new interviews with his ex wife indicate that he may actually have been trying to kill her and was killing others to make the event look more random, she was actually in the vicinity of each of the shootings and had been abused by her ex consistently. http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/06/snipers-ex-wife-speaks-out-on-abuse/?feat=home_top5_shared
Nee John Allen Williams, Muhammed was an American born man who converted to Islam, which raises a variety of associations, but not the ones evoked by Malik Nader Hassan whose ties to Islam are familial and cultural, albeit having been born in the US.
"I can not think of one instance before yesterday in which a mass murderer in the US, and there have been many who have gone on such killing sprees, was a Muslim . . . "
9/11. You can't confine it to shooting sprees- violence against large numbers of people by Muslims has been burned into our psyches by terrorist acts.
I suppose it has been. Still, we have a selective memory about such things. And with regards to the type of incident that happened at Fort Hood yesterday, there have been many similar events in the US in recent years, and none involved anyone that we regard as being a Muslim.
What about the Arkansas recruiting center shootings?
should have realized as I was typing that an example would slip by me.
At any rate, I still don't think we readily associate these sorts of shootings with radical Muslims in the US. And I hope this latest event doesn't change that.
Man, would I hate to be a Muslim living in the US right now.
"What's more the brainwashing is continuous and ongoing..." Its hard to escape The Matrix. First step: knowing, on at least some level, that it exists.
Sometimes bigotry can be untintentionally hilarious. Back in the summer of '92 I was sitting at a bar in Crafton, PA (just outside of Pittsburgh) with two college buddies. One glassy-eyed yinzer wandered over to us while we downing our wings and began to tell us a tale that started out with the line "Earler today there was these two chinamen from Japan."
I love my people. I truly do. But we have some issue, oh yes we do.
I've got nothing against bigots. Some of my best friends are bigots! I know tons of them! They use my bathroom!
Piles and piles of bigot friends!
I'm just concerned about their children!
Now when Obama said this about his grandmother last year he caught all kinds of hell for it.
Bigots are three-dimensional people. I'm even related to a few. I'm able to give them a pass because of the era in which they grew up. It's a type of reactionary bigotry, a result of years and years of exclusion. It's something I have to keep in mind whenever my mother mutters "fucking honkies" at the tv.
Obama's speech on racism is the main reason why i voted for him.
That was extremely frustrating, even painful, to me - watching what I thought was a very thoughtful and well-considered speech on race in America get distorted by the Right Wing Hate Machine into "playing the race card" and "throwing his grandmother under a bus." I would have thought that they simply heard a different speech than me, but I realized that they heard the only speech that they could ever imagine hearing from a black man in that situation. Truly infuriating.
I think you get at something here that is key. The truth asking that people reflect on their bigoted beliefs and self police is for some kind of anti-american. The right to be bigoted or at least to re-cast your behavior as benign or to flat out deny it becomes intertwined with some since of freedom. Community standards based on empathy that lead to an acknowledgment of your bias, if not a renouncement of toxic beliefs, for many represents some sort of creeping socialism. Combine that with enough prominent voices more than willing to give ethical cover to such bigotry and you arrive where we are now.
There's a good SNL sketch in this but I don't know if they'd touch it these days. It'd be all about a bunch of people with various ethnic backgrounds, religous affiliations and sexual oreintations gathering in a circle hurling epithets at each other, all the while, laughing, hugging and bonding over their joy at finally being able to express openly what they've felt about each other for years because Obama, in a "We Are the World" moment, just announced that we should all "love the bigot but hate the bigotry."
"Join us as we embrace our inner bigot!"
"Say it loud! I hate, I'm proud!"
LOL! That reminds me of a Mad Magazine joke I read as a kid, called something like, "You Can Never Change a Bigot." It was a series of two-panel cartoons. In the first, the bigot expresses a prejudice; in the second, s/he is proved wrong, but s/he just expresses a new prejudice to explain it.
For instance, two waiters are in a restaurant and one says he's serving a Jewish family and probably won't get a tip "because you know how cheap those Jews are." In the second panel, he gets a 25% tip and says, "Well, that's because the Jews have all the money!"
In another, a woman says about her new, Mexican neighbors, "They're probably all on welfare!" When she finds out that all the adults are gainfully employed, she says, "See how they come to this country and take away jobs from real Americans!"
"Bigot" and "Racist" are such hard words because nobody wants to be one, but once the label has been applied to a person (whether they really deserve it or not) it's nearly impossible to disprove or shake off. There's not much room for improvement or forgiveness.
If you're once judged a bigot, how do you show that you've improved and are no longer one? You might stop acting in discriminatory ways, but how do you prove a negative about what your motivations are? How do you show that you aren't just "faking it" so that people don't think ill of you? If that initial level of trust and benefit of the doubt is ever lost, fairly or unfairly, it's awfully hard to get it back. The suspicion is always going to be there.
George Wallace was as bigoted as they come, and yet he convinced many African-Americans in Alabama that he had truly changed.
I wholeheartedly agree with this post.
I have many friends and family members who could be classified as "bigots." Do I love them any less? Hell no! I accept the fact that human beings are complex, imperfect, and capable of good things and bad things. Humans are not politics; they are poetry.
For instance, one of my friends is a stereotypical alpha male jock type. He's one of those people who is OK with my sexuality as long as I don't "put it in his face." He also thinks homosexuality is a choice. When he says ignorant things, I try to gently persuade him with facts and humor. I don't condemn or shame him. What moral high ground could I stand on to do that?
I also understand that society is not always fair, and there has never been a perfectly just society in human history. It is humbling to know that even though I may be treated unfairly in some ways, there have been many, many people throughout history who have been treated much worse but have still lived happy, meaningful lives. It's every person's responsibility to find meaning and satisfaction in their lives within the confines they are given.
Unfortunately, I don't remember the day but I could swear you already broke down this whole bigot/bad person dichotomy. I know you aren't into reruns, but a refresher on the excellent points you made couldn't hurt.
I'm a straight SSM supporter from the State of Maine and for some perverse reason made myself read the "letters to the editor" section of my local paper. It was pretty sickening. I remember one letter where someone was clearly if implicitly saying that gay sex causes AIDS and SSM should be banned because of that. Letters like this were published daily and it wears you down and makes you want to shout "Bigot!" because that is what you're reading.
If it the same kinds of language was directed at any group other than gay people, it wouldn't be the least bit acceptable. That makes me very skeptical of soft-peddling anti-gay rhetoric, or of Rod Dreher's apologia for discrimination. When you actually look at what a large number of people say, not just Dreher blogging from 10,000 feet, the stuff is vile.
Well actually you could apply it to atheists and plenty of people would find it acceptable.
To be fair, atheists have the right to marry other atheists.
PirateGuy, how about some proof to back up that statement-- That the majority of people would find bigoted remarks against atheists acceptable. I disagree with you. I think you are mistaking a vocal minority for the majority.
Glenn Beck.
Also see studies that show that americans would rather vote for a gay person than an atheist.
To be fair atheists have it better than gay peopel as far as rights. But gay people and atheists are both hated and misunderstood by a sizable section of the country.
We are both told that children shouldn't even know we exist.
One huge advantage atheists have is that we can hide in our closets with so much more ease.
Bigotry against either is terrible, and I actually worry more about bigotry towards gays as I at least have my rights and privileges. So I am fine with my issues being on the backburner and dealt with as they come up. I do think that if you had separation of church and state actually applied the gay community would have their rights as a part of that.
lebecka:
From George HW Bush's successful1987 election campaign:
This was from a moderate Republican, with whom Obama just rubbed elbows in Texas a couple weeks ago. Could you ever imagine that being said by a moderate Republican about gays and lesbians? And when American Atheist brought the remark to the Senate for censure, not a single senator or representative responded to their letter.
Atheists (and Muslims, and Mormons, and Pentacostals, and Scientologists, and Seventh Day Adventists, and rednecks in general regardless of faith or lack thereof), are all "acceptable" targets of bigotry in our society because large swaths of Americans remain fundamentally Ignorant about them, so few people recognize and point out the bigotry when it happens. In insular communities that avoid contact with outsiders, the breadth of Ignorance grows wider and deeper and cultivates vaster populations of diehard bigots. (This holds true whether we're discussing a cut-off ex-Mormon polygamist sect whose members forbid fraternizing with the Fallen World or a cut-off antitheist web forum whose members forbid anything but negative commentary on Irrational Religionists).
All of the above "occasionally permissible" targets of bigotry, however, are permitted the contract rights of civil marriage. So all of them receive less instistutionalized discrimination than gays, in this country.
Or fat people. Or muslims. Or women. Or black people. Or jews.
I hear this all the time -- "if you said something like that about [black people|women|jews|glbt]..." and what? Like people don't say stuff like that all the time with no real recourse? Racism, prejudice and bigotry are so pervasive that we (especially white people, but anybody dealing with a prejudice not against them) simply don't notice what people are allowed to get away with unless we are looking for it.
Chase goes on to say the following in his piece:
"My great-grandmother didn’t have much of a chance to be anything but a bigot. Her bigotry was an accident of history, and not in any real sense a choice. Frankly, I do not blame her for what she was. I blame the politicians and writers and preachers who actually had the chance to shape her environment and chose to do so in a way that inflamed bigotry."
To be blunt, who cares? A product of her time? All people are a product of their time. "Good Germans" were a product of their time as well. Accident of history? Blame the politicians? I think that is just lame. You don't get a pass because you just went along with all of the other morons in your era.
Why is it so hard for people to take responsibility for their beliefs and actions? What happened to thinking for yourself? What happened to free will? What's the matter with being wrong and owning up to it or accepting what you/your family are?
Good person? Does not sound like it to me.
Why is it so hard for people to take responsibility for their beliefs and actions? What happened to thinking for yourself? What happened to free will?
Isn't that similar to the point of view that poor people in the ghetto should just buckle down and pull themselves up by their bootstraps? In theory, people should be able to do both, but in reality, there is a backdrop of real life that gets in the way, in ways we don't even know.
How many people were out there pushing for gay marriage in the 1980's? The idea was considered so absurd, it was very rarely even spoken about. Things are different now.
I am not saying these people deserve a medal, but it is easy to think that we all would be that one guy in the 1850's who was running the Underground Railroad, or would have marched with MLK Jr. in DC.
This doesn't wash to me. We live in an time of unprecedented awareness of minority struggles and if you are not aware and care to be you can very easily find out. We all, whether you embrace the beliefs of those groups or not, live in and are informed by the post-movement era (underground RR, civil rights, women rights, etc.). I feel that most who work against the honest complaints of minority groups or choose to ignore the legacy of their struggle do so willingly and fully aware of the ramifications.
Most people's 90 year old grandmas are not particularly swayed by these movements. Mine certainly aren't. I think at a certain point you have to feel satisfied with "please don't say that around me, Grandma", because you are not likely to change their opinion, but they are likely to not want to hurt your feelings, either.
I am not sure that what I wrote is in opposition to what you are saying. I was saying that things were different in the days of my grandparents and it is so easy for us to be smug about our relative enlightenment versus that of people who grew up in an era where segretation was the norm.
Ok, got you. We are in agreement here.
I think it's different. I agree that real life gets in the way but I do not agree that it absolves someone of taking responsibility for their thoughts and actions. You don't have to be part of the Underground railroad to think for yourself. There is a lot of middle ground here and there is a big difference between succumbing to the ways and thoughts of the mob and taking the time to reflect on your own opinions.
Mediocrity should not be excused. If she wants to be a bigot and has reasons for it, fine. But for Chase to try and twist things around is a coward's way out.
It is complicated, though, right? For example, when the term "Good Germans" actually means "bad Germans," does it refer to all Germans?
Just those who agreed with Americans of the same time that the world would be better off without the jews?
Those Germans who went off to work toward the final solution?
Those who didn't like the Jews but didn't like the final solution either?
Those who disagreed with their government's policies and actions yet still went about their lives?
It is complicated but in the end I think it is about responsibility. If you do or don't like something, I think you should have a reason for it besides society told me. You don't have to be a hero not to be a sheep.
That's an admirable ideal, so long as you're willing to humbly accept the near-certainty that many of your near-universal social opinions will likely be condemned and deplored in the fullness of time. Tons of thoughts we recoil from today were considered to be universal truths: homosexuality was a horrible medical affliction, at best; women were not capable of mathematical mastery; men were not capable of proper childcare; slavery was an honorable end for prisoners of war; seizure sufferers needed to be institutionalized; blacks were not capable of mastering refined sport; whites were not capable of mastering primal eroticism.
These were universals. Only near-saints rose above this kind of thought, and most near-saints only transcended one or three. Actual pure anti-Ignorant non-prejudice is commonly attributed to no one short of religion-founders, and is by no means common among them.
Consequently, it is a near certainty that everyone here holds moral opinions about people and animals that will come to be understood as ignorant and/or bigotted in the fullness of time. Very few of us are doing anything at all about animal research ethics, overfishing, commercial livestock ethics, world poverty abatement, carbon-neutral living, and voter rights for the incarcerated. And that's the stuff I can even think of because a tiny % does care about them. If science comes to show some shocking potential for children in 200 years, every single one of us is going to be condemned for anti-child bigotry. And rightly so.
If we're willing to apply this standard to our life, we can bag on Mr. Chase's granma (but still probably shouldn't to avoid being d-bags). If we're not ready to humbly accept this kind of judgment on our life, we should please cut her some loving slack.
I think to a lot of people, admitting to bigotry is like the stubborn person who can't admit he or she was wrong. Some gain currency from calling out bigoted acts, so an admission that one also harbors prejudice is seen as undercutting ones message. Others just have the feeling that other people are bigots, but my beliefs are based upon astute insights into other cultures.
Back to being serious,
When I moved to Australia, I discovered prejudices within me that I had no idea were there. I still don't know where they came from. But I acknowledge them and fight like hell to beat them into dust.
Actually, that makes it sound harder than it's been. Basically, the only difficult part was acknowledging them. Since then, I've recognized the deed or (far more often) the thought, and confronted it with what I know is right.
This, T's statement of fact close in the article and Sorn's short one down a ways are the best things I've read in months.
This goes round and round and round, but these three comments nut it.
There are folks in our lives with flaws of their own but they also manage to pass along these simple wisdoms.
The shades of meaning and utility of language are so important. Although 'bigots' obviously exist(and I might very well be one myself), I don't think it's normally useful to label a person as such in conversation if we want a chance to change the behavior. Calling a person a 'bigot' comes off sounding too much like a defining, innate characteristic that can't ever be changed or improved. One isn't able to say, "He used to be 100% bigot but now he's only 50%!".
That's why I prefer the word 'prejudiced against/towards'. I can say to my grandma "you're prejudiced against gays when it comes to..." and it gets the point across without closing down the discussion, because it sounds like a criticism of behavior rather than a personal attack. 'Prejudiced against' sounds like it contains an action, a verb that's a mental choice; it seems more mutable. And I find that people are a lot more willing to admit they 'have' a prejudice than they will to 'being' a bigot. Easier to dialogue that way.
And I will tell you, without a moments hesitation, that I was one of them.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the trajectory of my own life re: homosexuality, and I will admit that I haven't admitted to my former homophobia without quite a bit of hesitation. It's nasty to see that stuff in your past, and I'm not great at wanting to stand still long enough to look at the nasty.
I also would really like to think that the trajectory was of my own making, but as you said yesterday, TNC, individual agency takes a village! I think my internal movement mirrors that which was happening outside of me, across the country -- in some quarters, at least. As a liberal, I guess I'm further along than many Americans, but I'm not alone, and I probably didn't get here on my own, either.
And then, finally, to quote you to yourself one last time, I'm reminded of what you wrote this summer about how bigotry is often not so much a lack of empathy as it is a lack of imagination. When we can suddenly truly imagine the lot of those we fight against, we are able to let some of the bigotry wash away. And that's where conversations like this one come it.
Gosh, this is so true re: imagination. TNC's post about obesity really made me take a hard look in the mirror at the assumptions I've been making about it. I think I've always had empathy for people struggling with obesity, but that image of someone having a tough, tough day, riding home on the bus, and having food be the one pleasant, nice thing about their day really hit me. Being able to imagine the realities of that existence through that story cleansed me of a subtle sort of bigotry that my empathy hadn't been able to touch.
this column: http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/index.ssf/2009/09/america_needs_to_lose_weight_r.html
set off a tempest in the writer's mailbox. So much so that for the first time in the many year's I've been familiar with her, and her rather incredible level of arrogance, she actually issued an apology in a following column and admitted that she didn't really understand what she was talking about. Some of the comments people made were very hurtful, too. And ignorant. Bigotry towards fat people is a real issue.
I think growing up I was more racially confused than anything else. The only Italian kid growing up in Washington Heights I grew up culturally hispanic but wasn't. Now that I live in an Atlanta suburb with my Dominican wife and mixed kids I can tell you I've developed very deep bias against white people. The way my family is looked at and treated by a great many people down here regardless of class or social status etc is disgusting and has succeeded in making me bitter. It also made me remember how me and my friends were treated on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or that summer we rented a house in the Hamptons, very similarly. Frankly, it makes me feel like my pinky toe is on the scale of prejudicial justice or some shit and so I am quite proud of my bias.
So you are saying that because some white people have treated you poorly, that is OK for you to be bigoted against all white people, but it is wrong for any white person to be bigoted against you.
I am very sorry that your family is made to feel uncomfortable in their home city. I too have felt uncomfortable in Hamptonish-places, but mostly because the people i met there were unsufferable prigs.
But I find your attitude a bit disconcerting. I understand having a bias; this would be quite natural for one who felt he was getting the short end of the stick. But to be proud of it? I would say that you must be bitter indeed.
Don't get me wrong some of our best friends are white. :P
Yes, I am both ok with it and think its ok. Here is a very typical senario with me and my wife. I look run of the mill Italian/White my wife looks very Dominican. People meet me at the school or scouts or the pool etc and they are so very friendly, we laugh at each others jokes, everyone is charmed and enjoys everyone. My wife comes over, says hello and gives me peck on the cheeck. I introduce her as my wife and you can feel the change almost instantly. It is like a record needle being dragged across a record. In fact, that's what we call it, "The Record Scratch." It might be coincedence but that NEVER happens with other hispanics, black, indian or asian members of our community. My racial bias is self-defense mechanics. I know there are good white people, we occassionally have a few of them over to the house for dinner, they accept my hispanic wife and our interracial children and I think that makes them regular ol good people but they are a minority in my world. We live in bigoted world, period.
So these people are surprised or put off at an interracial marriage? Seems almost laughable to me, in this day and age. These people seem as if they would pretty tiresome.
What can you do? I guess you could move. I guess you could ignore it, or I guess you could start punching people's lights out. I don;t know which is best for you. But allowing bitterness to take over a part of you is only hurting you, not them.
What's a good way to turn this around? Saying, "oops, honey, our secret is out! now we'll never get on the PTA." Or something like that. If they make you uncomfortable, maybe you should return the favor.
Now that's odd. Normally one expects that bigotted people are consistent in recoiling from any and all members of a group they despise, except maybe individuals they know very well whom about they say "Oh, he's not like a typical [insert racial/ethic slur] at all!"
Is prejudice personal or political?
Too simple, I know, not least because it can be both, but the distinction nonetheless matters. We're prejudiced and we love and respect those who are prejudiced, and we're not quite sure what to do with these hard bits of ignorance and hatred mingled amidst the warmth and humor and idiosyncracies of those we love.
Fair enough. We're complex beings in relationship with other complex beings, and not everything is going to fit together easily. How we make sense of those intimate relations is distinct from how how we make sense of other kinds of relations.
Which brings us to the political. You can tell me your grandma was a prejudiced and wonderful woman, and I can tell you my brother is a prejudiced and conscientious man, and that might matter to us as grandchildren and siblings, but how can that matter to us as citizens? I don't know your grandma and you don't know my brother, but how they act politically---how they vote, what political opinions they express, what petitions they sign---affects us all, family and stranger alike.
More to the point, these acts affect you and me not as grandchildren and siblings, but as citizens and human beings. If your grandma or my brother acts against someone, uses their power as citizens to deny others equal status under the law, then those of us who favor equal status may justly condemn them for their actions. (They, too, might condemn us for our actions on behalf of equality. That's how it is.)
I'm rambling and I apologize; I'm circling around a point I can't quite reach. I guess I'm trying to get at the notion of a specific kind of responsibility, and that it's not unfair to hold someone responsible, politically, for their political actions. How prejudice plays out personally and how it plays out politically differs, so it's not unreasonable to respond differently, depending upon the circumstances. But that's not the same as saying that the personal goodness of someone erases or cancels out the noxiousness of their political actions.
Should we use different words to recognize those different (personal, political) circumstances? Maybe, but given that I'm becoming more inarticulate the more I write, I'll have to cede the discussion to those of you who retain some clarity of thought.
There's an added nuance, though, when discussing the generation in which bigotry was the culture norm. They were also a generation that understood community more than the latch-key or facebook generation does. Here's a story of my grandfather, which has a number of levels to it:
He was a steelworker who rarely, if ever, left his overwhelmingly white community. When he retired, he started became extremely active in the community. Working to get another firehouse built, a library built, a recreation center, etc... He was passionate about his neighborhood. He was also a bigot.
My father recalls a story when he was returning from college one weekend - late 1960s - and his pop (my grandfather) was spewing all kinds of hate towards blacks at the dinner table. My father stopped him: "Pop, how can you say such things about black people when you're such good friends with Tom down the street?" (Tom, a black man, was a fellow community activist with my grandfather).
My grandfather's response: "Tom's not black, he's my neighbor."
In a world where people were raised to be part of and care for their community, such an ethos is often more powerful than the abstract negative conceptions of the "other." The abstract conceptions may give rise to the language used - but the investment in the community and those who inhabit it (regardless of race) can be more powerful.
On the flip side, I seen plenty of liberals who have the perfect language and abstract conceptions about race, and yet leave town when the black/white ratio hits the tipping point.
Thoughts?
This.
My grandfather's response: "Tom's not black, he's my neighbor."
My father, almost word for word, about a dearly loved coworker.
And, double this.
On the flip side, I seen plenty of liberals who have the perfect language and abstract conceptions about race, and yet leave town when the black/white ratio hits the tipping point.
The story of San Francisco (except not just black/white.)
I can see your point, and am all for investment in community. That kind of daily care for one's own place does have a rippling positive effect.
But about your grandfather: he had this black friend he didn't perceive as black. Would he have welcomed black strangers into the community? What would they have to do to prove they were "OK," and would they get that chance? Obviously, this is not intended to disprove your point about community ethos being more powerful than abstract conceptions of the other; it goes along with it. But the whole problem with prejudice is how it closes the community, potentially pits one community against another.
You don't think your grandfather would have left if the area had become majority black? What if it became majority black and poorer and there was an increase in crime and all the other shit that white people leave cities over? I don't know that because he was a community activist he would have stuck around, whereas the non-prejudiced but non-activist liberals would have left.
Ideally, you have it right both in the abstract and in the real day-to-day.
Mr Shrimp: "Ideally, you have it right both in the abstract and in the real day-to-day."
Agreed. Actually, I would just say "Ideally you have it right." Period - meaning that, unless you have both, you don't have it "right." And that begs the question: how do you get "right" in the day to day - that is, just being a good human being to one another, no more no less than with those of your same complexion or preferences? I would argue that it doesn't proceed automatically from having the correct "thought process" and "ideas" about race (or any other matter over which we divide).
It proceeds from a different direction. I would suggest that if we want to live without prejudices and without arbitrary division, we must derive our sense of self from our situated context. We are raised - through formal education as well as through myriad and persistant reinforcers throughout society - that we are INDIVIDUALS, atomistic and separated. Our identities are as AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUALS. If this habit of thought persists - it has a cascading effect on so many areas of our lives - and enables the worldview fearful of the "other". But if we identify our individuality as understood within our situated place - our community - then we are constantly looking outward in order to understand our internal identity.
This engenders an others-regarding quality to the lens with which we approach novel or difficult issues.
A bit of a dissheveled ramble, sorry. Thoughts?
If I had a buck for everytime a White person told me "I don't think of you as Black" I wouldn't be rich, but I would have some money in the bank.
I think I would have a bloody lip from biting it all day long.
Deep breaths. Breathe in- breathe out.
Do not hit dumb white girl.
@anna,
and didn't realize how much of an insult that was.
I can get that in a world where race plays such a prominent role - it is disingenuous for someone to claim "I don't see you as black" - as a way of showing they're "colorblind."
But I see that as different than coming from a man who is obviously NOT colorblind (i.e. unabashedly bigotted) but yet, in certain circumstances - i.e. when he is joined together with someone for a common purpose and work - does not recognize race as an issue.
The key to my story was not to show a man who made claims of being colorblind - but rather to show how a person can have an utter disconnect between two ways of thinking and can simultaneuous (and honestly - even if ignorant) hold two conflicting views.
Thoughts?
Even as a young girl, I felt insulted by the "I don't think of you as Black" comments, as if I had somehow "crossed over." For example, Black artists didn't "cross-over" to White fans, rather these fans, at least in this instance, overcame their own Matrix enforced racism and crossed over to the Black artists. But this affinity for the dispised "other" had to be explained, hence "I don't think of them/you as Black." They excused my Blackness.
I just read this over there on Sullivan and came over here - I was like "I *KNOW* TNC picked up on this!" Nice. It bears repeating, bigotry is bad but common and it is possible for good people to find bigotry within themselves.
Growing up is a beautiful thing isn't it? I mean if we aren't allowed the chance to grow we never change our opinions. The greatest things about life is the opinions we're born with don't necessarily have to be the ones we die with.
This is the absolute truth, and the thing that slays is how infrequently we, as a society, fail to allow room for that. We call it flip-flopping or being disingenuous, and we so often act like the old behavior is the more genuine. Like once a fool -- always a fool.
It really irritates me, in no small part because I think it's at the base of one the problems we talk about so often on this board: The all-too frequent refusal of those in the wrong to admit that they are in the wrong.
We seem to value consistency over growth, and people get locked in.
John Maynard Keynes said, "When the facts change, sir, I change my opinion. What do you do?"
I always thought this was a good description of wisdom.
I do think that we too often equate bigoted people with bad people. There's a difference between being a card carrying member of the KKK and simply being an average suburban white person who tells black jokes. In my opinion, the vast majority of people are racists to some degree. After all, in a society pervaded by racism, one shouldn't be too surprised when the majority of its citizens harbor bigoted beliefs. I also think that we too often perceive bigoted people as merely ignorant and deluded. This whole notion that simply having contact with members of different races will eliminate bigotry is profoundly wrong. For example, in the 2008 Democratic primaries, white voters who lived in areas around black people (such as certain places in Ohio, Pennsylvania, certain Southern states, ect) were more likely to vote for Hilary Clinton and be hostile towards Obama on account of his race than white voters in places such as Oregon and Iowa (states with incredibly small black populations). Likewise, "angry white" voters in the 1992 presidential election who voted for Ross Perot were more likely to live in diverse areas than whites who voted for Clinton or Bush. Finally, so as not to let myself off the hook, much of my prejudice comes from growing up in the very diverse Bay Area. I attended a private middle school in Oakland that sought to be inclusive (their slogan was "a private school with a public purpose"). As a result, there were a decent amount of black kids at this school, including some from the hood. I remember going through my "wigga" phrase because I thought those kids were so cool and I wanted to be like them, which reflected my overall naivete that most young people have at that age. At the same time, I was a geeky loser who was scared to death of them. If one of them ever insulted me and they then proceeded to threaten me for retorting with an insult of my own, I would often cower in fear or apologize profusely. Due to this experience in Oakland, I came away with the impression that black kids were these aggressive ghetto kids with an edge. In High School, I was part of a multiracial crew that consisted of one Asian, a few Filipinos, one Latino, one black, and one white (me). Therefore, unlike a large percentage of white kids who have the privilege of not having to really think about or deal with race, race was always a huge issue for me. Now, you are probably wondering why I chose such a group of friends in the first place if I constantly had to deal with racial headaches. Well, for reasons of personal taste, we just somehow gravitated towards one another. Also, I think one can separate the personal from the political. As Malcolm X once said, he had white friends and even Uncle Tom friends, despite not holding both of those groups in high esteem. My friends and I would often joke about how we hang around one another despite hating each other's races. We would even have racist rankings for each of us (I think I ranked number 3). As a result of having to deal with racial headaches in a non-white social group in high school, I now have this angry-white-guy mentality and can't help but see myself as under siege from various groups. Even though I generally have a liberal voting record on issues such as the environment, abortion, and economics, I am less liberal on issues of race (affirmative action, integration policies, multiculturalism) and more moderate on immigration (I believe that those who are already here should be given a path towards citizenship. At the same time, I believe in shutting down the border). Though I continue to have many non-white friends (this isn't one of those "my best friend is black" excuses. This is just my life), this kind of thinking still pervades my life. Though many prejudiced whites do live in isolated areas and base their opinions of blacks and other non-whites on images they see from the media, my personal experience doesn't reflect the "ignorant and insular racist" stereotype. My experience probably doesn't reflect that of other white kids. One of the reasons why I visit this blog and generally agree with the views of Ta-Nehisi is that I believe trying to "enlighten" whites about their prejudice and "deconstruct" their white identity and privilege doesn't actually help solve the problem of racism, while making whites even more hostile to initiatives that help blacks and other groups. Therefore, rather than trying to wash white people, anti-racists should seek to push for substantive policies that actually improve the lives of black people. Besides, if conditions in ghettos improve and poverty is reduced, then many black stereotypes associated with "the hood" will be less potent. This is just my personal opinion. I don't claim to speak for all white people. Just as blacks are a diverse group that doesn't worship Al Sharpton, whites are not a monolithic group. Anyway, that's my two cents.
The name "bigot" obscures more than it clarifies.
At one time in this country (some hundreds of years ago), a great majority of white people sincerely believed that people of African descent were inferior human beings, dumber, less capable than people of European descent. Did that make them "bigots"? Or did it just make them wrong?
At the present time, a great number of straight people in this country, perhaps not a majority, but a lot of people, believe that homosexuals are "perverts" and that homosexual sex is morally wrong. Does that make them "bigots" or are they just wrong?
As religious conservatives (and scientists) tirelessly remind us, truth is not determined by plebiscite.
The Founding Fathers stated that "all men are created equal." Leaving out for the moment the huge omission of women, the Fathers clearly did not believe that statement, at least not literally. (For one thing, most of them were slaveholders!) That's an aspiration, right? Of course people are not all equal in any discernible way; we are not all equally smart, equally virtuous, equally capable or even equally tall. But they, we, founded this country on the aspiration that before the law all would be treated equally.
This is an aspiration we continue to aim for, and continue to fall short of. This is all the homosexuals are asking: the equal protections of the law. This is what the Civil Rights leaders were asking for.
Perhaps a "bigot" is simply someone who has forgotten or who chooses to ignore the high American aspiration. Or who never learned it, or who hasn't thought how widely it must be applied if it is to mean anything at all.
But the idea of human equality before the law is so powerful that it almost seems to have a life of its own. We still see it spreading in our own time, long after it was first articulated.
In the instance of homosexuality, our grandchildren will shake their heads and wonder what all the shouting was about.
This may be taking the discussion in to abstract a direction, but while philosophers tend to think of ethics in terms of consequentionalism vs rule following, most people are naturally virtue theorists. That is they see being good in terms of having character in almost the manner of good health. In this kind of view which stems from the Greeks and has been pushed by the Catholic church through the ages, being bad is almost self punishing because it is like an illness.
For utilitarians there is no particular problem with understanding why someone can be good in this way and bad in that way. This behavior has good consequences that one doesn't.
But for the virtue theorist there does seem to be some problem in understanding how one can be a bigot and otherwise a good person. Because being a bigot means have a lack of character and ones character infects everything about oneself.
This shows up on the flip side why homophobes have been aghast at the idea of showing homosexuals on tv, because their view has trouble with the idea that they homosexuals can be sinners (in doing homosexual acts) and yet otherwise good people. There seems to be a cognitive dissonance there.
One of the things that experience should teach us about the world is that it is quite common for people to be morally awful in some areas and morally admirable in others.
This was what I was seeing on Daily Kos and other blogs during the Prop 8 deal. There were people who thought it astounding that black people would vote against gay marriage. They took no account into how people were brought up and etc. I remember referring to several diaries of people who talked about their racist grandmother or uncle not wanted to vote for Obama because he was 'black'.
Everyone was saying that racism is like a disease and it takes time for people to get over their hatred. I agreed. I think that it does. Come back to black people voting against Prop 8. All I heard was, How dare they? They wanted immediate satisfaction. I'm sorry but it goes both ways. If it takes time for people to get over their racism, then it takes time for people to get over their homophobia.
We need to be real for a moment. Do people seriously think blacks were thinking about gay rights during the civil rights marches? No, they weren't. Most of them were Christians brought up in the church and they were highly influenced by the bible. This is the issue with most people who are against gay marriage. Religion. Whether they follow the bible or not, a ton of blacks and whites believe whatever the bible says. It takes time to break down that wall.
Bigots may be nice to select groups of people or individuals but they are neither wonderful nor are they good people.
"The name bigot obscures more than it clarifies."
This statement would be true only if the term were being used as an accusation flung in someone's face. I would agree that accusations make people defensive and cut off meaningful communication.
On the other hand, it is perfectly appropriate as an expression of opinion or belief to refer to someone as a 'bigot' when describing that person's actions or beliefs. It is not a term that 'obscures rather than clarifies;' it's simply a description of certain behaviors or beliefs.
If your grandma thinks that blacks, by the mere fact of being black, are less intelligent than white people, or that all blacks have rhythym, or that all black men want to rape white women, then your grandma is a bigot, has bigotted beliefs. It's not about clarifying anything or mollifying anyone; it's about communicating an opinion or description.
Also, I don't see the distinction between being bigotted and being 'wrong'. Being wrong is the definition of being a bigot. And to the victim of bigotry, it doesn't make much difference whether the bigot is a good person in other areas of life.
I disagree that it was hundreds of years ago that a great majority of white people believed that black people were inferior human beings. I would phrase it: "for hundreds of years white people believed black people were inferior human beings." Slavery may have been abolished, but the belief system that supported it was not abolished. Jim Crow was slavery by another name and lasted for another hundred years after the abolition of de jure slavery.
If it ever was the *great* majority of white people that believed in black inferiority, it does not appear to be the great majority anymore. But there is a very vocal minority of white people who, at least in public, have done everything but call Barack Obama a nigger, who think that Obama, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, is "in over his head," code for saying that Obama is black and inferior, and believe that Obama and his wife only got into Ivy League schools through affirmative action, rather than through academic achievement. These may not be the views of the majority of white people, but the media treats them as though they were.
We live in a society with perverse racism, bigotry, hatred etc. Our country was built on the hate of the other as much as it was built on the ideals of freedom and inequality. I definitely have bigoted ideas--less everyday--but still some. And I have acted on some of that bigotry in past--ending friendships because some kid was labeled gay for example.
In a way I feel like many commenters are missing TNC's point--admit to your own bigotry--be honest--fix it or stay bigoted but admit that you have it. There is so much intellectual gymnastics happening on this page, my head is spinning.
Walk in the light.
I don't know maybe I'm misinterpreting the point.
"There is so much intellectual gymnastics happening on this page, my head is spinning.
Walk in the light.
I don't know maybe I'm misinterpreting the point."
I hope not. It's fundamental. So is one's head being spun.
Coming out of the spin is what's for supper.
"Walk into the light" was going round and round my head most of yesterday.
I still can't get this how I want to say it, but to try:
The wisdoms we have come from someone elses close to us.
They just don't materialize, as if by magic.
Some of the most damaged people close to us also managed, through all those flaws, to plant a need to know - a need to "walk into the light".
And, that's to be commended, in them and us.
Forgiveness is a (wait for it) bitch. Living with it is even more difficult.
Geez, am I the only one here who doesn't think of him or herself as a bigot, even a little bit? I don't think anyone in my immediate family is, either (though my grandparents died before I was born). My dad was a little homophobic thirty years ago, but he wised up pretty quickly. We're not a bunch of crunchy bleeding hearts, either. I dunno -- that stuff just never really flew around my house -- in large part because we were all taught to be very...skeptical -- that is, not to draw conclusions about anybody in any circumstances, but to treat the world as an ongoing curiosity, an investigation, a conversation in which the grounds might shift at any moment, and in which one must therefore be prepared to reverse or change position immediately and without complaining.
Am I a bigot? It's not for me to say, really. I don't know if it's for anyone else to say either, but I know they will. Me, I'm not sure it's that interesting a question. More important than any of this is to keep the conversation going, learn to listen, stay skeptical, prepare to be surprised and keep on your toes.
I realize I sound a little like Richard Rorty here...
And it doesn't, by the way, mean that I haven't done a lot of other things wrong in my life....
If your bigoted beliefs compel you to act in ways that will result in harm to the group(s) that you hold these beliefs about then, yes, you are an 'awful' person. I think we all understand that prejudice is, sadly, a part of the human condition. However, when your bigotry moves from beliefs to actions against these groups, then that is a problem. There is a huge difference between simply saying "faggot" vs. attacking someone because you believe he or she is a "faggot", or denying someone employment, or a place to live, etc., because you don't like "faggots."
I think Mr. Chase's piece is simply a weak attempt at rationalizing his great-grandmother's behavior. He calls her a "product of her time", but she wasn't the only person born during "her time." Many people with the same upbringing came around to understand the error of their thinking. That she embraced the bigotry of her time isn't due to some mystical force that she could not resist. Instead, it's a testament to both her prejudice and proud ignorance because of her unwillingness to embrace the humanity of these people.
Of all that Brian mentioned in his post the following was the most laughable, "My great-grandmother didn’t have much of a chance to be anything but a bigot. Her bigotry was an accident of history, and not in any real sense a choice." She didn't have much of a choice? Is he serious? All that she did was to make choices, freely, to demonize an entire group of people that she didn't even know. I wonder if all the poor black folks in prison can use this excuse.