Is it possible for someone to be totally racist but not realize it?

[Electric Monk]

Poll question: Is it possible for someone to be totally racist but not realize it?

This poll was inspired from a comment by Bill Maher on his show tonight, fwiw.

[Warpy]

1. Look at it this way. Bigots tend to flock together and reinforce each other

In addition, the biggest bigots out there know people who are "other," and those people are OK because they're known. It's the mass of other people that are no good and only because the bigot does not know them. However, since the ones he knows are getting a pass, he doesn't consider himself a bigot.

[Balbus]

2. Absolutely. You see many examples a week on this site, alone.

Maybe more bigoted than racist, but same idea.

[provis99]

6. just like there are some who can't get enough of hating liberals.

Even going to go so far as posting on a liberal website and complaining it's full of bigots.

[JohnnyRingo]

3. I had to say "I don't know",

because I can't tell what lives in a person's heart. I don't know what any individual would do in a complex set of hypothetical situations. Maybe a Klansman would rush into a burning building to rescue a family of color. I can say I doubt it, but the truth is... I don't know.

By the sams token, a seemingly racial tolerent person may go on an insane rampage if a family moves in next door, or if a relative enters an integrated reltionship. Did that person know ahead of the fact that they had a deep rooted bias?

I don't know.

[Broken_Hero]

4. Yep, of course....

My mother/father in law are extremely racist against Mexicans, but they don't realize it, despite my wife and I's efforts...heck, even my brother in law is racist against Mexicans. They all fall into the "they should go home" group....

[JaneQPublic]

5. The most racist people I've known denied being racist

In their minds, they weren't expressing extreme, hate-filled, biased mischaracterizations of certain other groups of people; rather, they were simply stating the facts about "those people," and anyone with a brain in their head could see that it was true.