Victim of Culture

When being a bigot is acceptable

If you ask why people are bigots, you’ll often get the answer because they are terrible, horrible, no good very bad people.  Of course, many very good people are bigoted against a particular group or idea.  They may spend most of their days taking meals to the homeless, but still harbor prejudices that color them ugly.  So, how do we reconcile two different perceptions of the same person?

We don’t often.  Instead we write off people with a broad brush.  Either we paint them as the aforementioned horrible type, or we justify their views using some quasi-logic about their upbringing or some other demographic detail.

One of the more common is to say people are bigots against groups they have little experience with.  For example, rural white kids dislike black people because they’ve had little personal interaction with people of color.  Christians have preconceived notions about Muslims because, at least in the US, they have few chances to interact.  In other words, bigotry is caused almost entirely by ignorance of a group.  Replace the ignorance with experience, and you replace the bigotry with accepting and understanding.

It’s a good theory, and it likely applicable in many cases.  As a teacher I have seen it in evidence as I’ve taught in different areas of the country.  Some were very intolerant towards homosexuals, blacks, white, Hispanics, Christians, Muslims, etc.  Each group tends to have its own bigotries, but also, in general, tend to be overall good people.  How to reconcile this?  Is it completely ignorance based?

Not entirely.  The other major cause of bigotry is the need to feel superior.  Starting from an early age this is why kids pick on those who are different from them on the playground.  He’s fat.  She’s Asian.  He’s short.  She’s got freckles.  Anything that can make someone more of the other, means that we’re more of the mainstream, and being in the mainstream is a wonderful thing as a child.  The problem is that we never really outgrow it.

For example, posters on the website Reddit.com recently celebrated when the NBC show My Name Is Earl was cancelled.  Because they didn’t like it?  For some.  But for many it had more to do with an intense dislike of star Jason Lee.  That might seem odd at first, as Lee belongs to an exclusive group of actors who made a name for themselves in the films of Kevin Smith.  Smith tends to be a god among geeks, and sites like Reddit pull heavily, if not exclusively, from the geek crowd.  But thinking this way would be logical, and exclude the fact that Lee happens to be a practicing Scientologist.

In the past few years a concentrated campaign has erupted through the Internet against Scientology.  It’s an odd fight for people to chose, what with this country being in the middle of two wars and having one of the most unpopular presidents ever.  They observed the landscape and saw Scientology as the great threat that needed something done about it.  But that’s fine, in this country we have freedom of speech and people can speak out against any ideas that they want.  Simply questioning Scientology is hardly a bad thing.

But reveling in the personal downfall of its members?  Simply because they are members of a particular religion?  Doesn’t that seem just a bit bigoted?  Okay, a lot bigoted?  Yes, because it is.  Disliking someone and rooting against them for such things is the essence of bigotry.  It’s really no different than rooting against someone because they happen to be a Republican or Democrat.  Or because they’re a vegetarian.  Or because they’re a sculptor, for that matter.

The argument many made was that Lee’s support of Scientology meant they could not support him.  Now, let’s think about this.  Isn’t this the same as not buying Elton John CDs because he’s gay?  Or boycotting reruns of Fraiser because Kelsey Grammer is a Republican?  What kind of narrow minded group think is this?  If we don’t personally agree with your views or lifestyle we’re going to actively root against your success?  It might be one thing to root against Lee if he were running a recruitment campaign for Scientology.  At least then you could root against the campaign, and not the man.  But anything else is just flat out bigotry.

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