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Lately there has been a great deal of attention in GD and the Lounge to the subject of prejudice, often raised in counterproductive ways and accompanied by bad feeling. This is needless. Prejudice is an important topic because in our culture (read that however you wish) it is so destructive so much of the time. Any efforts that we make to look at it analytically instead of just lashing out will be a necessary first step in overcoming destructive patterns.
We all have prejudices. None of us is a blank slate. We have prejudices because we can discern differences, and from early childhood we engage in a mental sorting out. Of course other factors are crucially important in determining how we look at differences: parents, cultural norms, friends, religion, influential public figures, and more. Put another way, we all have biases or preferences.
Not all prejudices are negative; some are positive. For example, there is a positive ethnic stereotype of Asians being good at math. This is exactly the same mental process as a negative stereotype.
Typically, people make two errors about their prejudices: they solidify prejudices so that no counterarguments are considered, and they confuse their personal biases for neutral, objective fact. Naturally, this leads to hurt feelings and sloppy thinking, as has been recently demonstrated.
An additional error most often found in the discourse of the left is the idea that being the object of prejudice confers moral authority. That is: whoever suffers the most wins some kind of prize. Thus we witness lively arguments about whether one ethnic group or another, one religion or another, one sexual preference or body type or political preference or another gets bragging rights as the highest elevated victim. I argue that that is a waste of time, since the real problem is destructive bias, and not group membership.
Biases held by the mainstream are kind of insidious; since they are culturally "normal," most people find no particular reason to question them.
Those of us who think of ourselves as progessive or egalitarian or liberal or anything similar have an obligation to make good on our professed beliefs. Therefore, two pieces of advice:
- Resist making value judgements about people based on prejudice.
- Where the above is impossible, be aware of the difference between your own personal prejudice and a naturalistic truth.
One danger in refusing to do so is that we then legitimize the radical right wing's model of looking at the world. Who should want to do that!
Peace.
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