My daughter “found out” that one of our favorite adult friends was gay, and said; “I didn’t know that about him.” I asked if it were any different for her now that she knew, she scrunched up her nose and said; “No! I love him.”

I strive to be as good a person as my daughter.

I saw one commenter on Erika’s post mention his dislike for political correctness. It reminded me of a similar comment I made to my moralizer friend. Once again he freaked out before I was able to explain it and even after I did he didn’t want to accept it (I am so evil *yawn*). I like the right kind of political correctness. I do not want to hear people make offensive jokes about blacks, chinks, fat people, disabled people, etc., but I’m also against this kind of sugarysweet political correctness that oppresses any kind of negative criticism even when it’s justified. I’m not always sure what people mean when they say they don’t like political correctness, but maybe some are feeling the same way as I do.

Vicki is right about the situation of the Turkish immigrants. They often get criticized for not adapting to the German culture, but at the same time there were not that many programs to help with their integration. The conservative politicians just didn’t care and the liberals were too entranced with their idea of harmonic multicultural co-existence. Integration may also have been neglected because Germany for a long time did not consider herself to be an immigration country such as the US.

And saying that Turkish immigrants take the jobs away that Germans want is the same as saying that Mexican immigrants take the jobs away that Americans want. How many Americans are out in the fields and how many Mexicans are sitting in an office?

And Mark, my point was not that my comment about Arabs was correct or justified. I don’t believe though that it was necessary for my friend to berate me. By the way, I’m living in an area with mostly Turkish people, a friend of mine jokingly called it “Little Istanbul.” When I told my friend (maybe I should say ex-friend, because I refuse to have contact with him as long as he doesn’t know what appropriate behavior means) about it, he got worked up all over this and criticized me for wanting to move to the “redlight district.” He doesn’t seem to like the fact that there are two sexshops in the street where I live and the idea of me living an area with all these low-class immigrants.

In my view, humans simply must prejudge because that is how we are wired. Whether we like it or not, we categorize what we see. We either do it consciously or we do it only unconsciously. That is the nature of our connectionist brains. If we are only exposed to a few examples of a “type,” we over-generalize, making coarse cartoons of that type. The next time we run into a person with XYZ characteristics, our brains/bodies experience a cascade of thoughts and emotions based upon our prior experience with people having those characteristics.

If the first two dogs we ever petted both tried to bite us, we’d become wary of all dogs. If the only African-Americans a person is exposed to are the criminals he or she saw being arrested on the local news, this causes that person to think of all African-Americans in a terribly unfair light.

Think of running across some guy wearing a KKK outfit. Would you approach him and see if you could strike up a relationship based on a blank slate approach? No way (I assume). His outfit would trigger a powerful flow of emotions, no matter what kind of guy he actually is. Maybe he’s actually just an actor or a psychology student and he isn’t overtly racist at all. Maybe he’s just stirring up people as a stunt. The KKK outfit is powerful stimulus, however, and primes us to assume that he will act in accordance with the sort of character typically displayed by others who have worn such an outfit.

I believe that many characteristics are capable of bringing along these automatic emotional/connectionist reactions too. I have often been pleasantly surprised in my interactions with young men dressed up in what appeared to be gang clothes.

The cure for race or homophobia is relatively simple (to take two common examples). The cure involves taking the time to get to know lots of individuals from “troublesome” categories. Once you have actually spent quality time with more than a few black (or gays or whatever), you’ll notice that there are profound differences among the individuals. When you next see a black (or gay), then, your brain/body won’t present you with strong automatic reactions based on an ill-informed cartoon. Instead, you’ll automatically feel the need to look for more fine-grained clues as to who this new black (or gay) person really is, if you want to know that person.

I don’t think that having a well-disciplined intellect is enough to cure stereotypes. You can intellectualize the problem of racism all day, but you might still be racist. Based on interactions I’ve often had with them, I suspect that many of the people who are the most intellectually conscious of the issue of racism are nonetheless the most racist. They talk talk talk about it and think think think about race, but they are still uncomfortable being around people of another “race.” Or am I over-generalizing here?!

My prototype non-racist is someone who spends lots of time with many people of lots of colors and features until those colors and features cease to trigger automatic reactions. That’s how it is with “white” people who spend most of their time with other “whites.” If asked, what are “white” people like, they would shrug and not even understand the question (unless they are having some fun concocting parody. See http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

I’ll end with an anecdote. One of my grandmothers was quite wary of African-Americans, at least earlier in her life. As she grew older, more and more African Americans moved into her neighborhood. Later in her life, we heard that a new neighbor moved in. My grandma described the new neighbor in some detail to our family. Imagine our surprise, when meeting the new neighbor, that we found out she was African American. But my grandma hadn’t mentioned her “race” to us. “Race” ceased to have the kind of meaning to my grandmother that it had earlier in her life, due to exposure to a wide variety of African-American folks.

My two cents.

By middle school there were lunch room tables where only black kids sat, and likewise tables voluntarily designated to whites. And by now, many of my once shiny-eyed unprejudiced peers espouse racial, sexual, and other stereotypes on a regular basis. We’ve learned the cultural shorthand. We’ve become just like the generations before us. And when I remember the old delusion that racism had died, it makes me quite sad.

Up until that time, you could be a third-generation turkish-german with no hope of citizenship, whereas ethnic Germans from the so-called Ostgebiete, the former German colonies in Eastern Europe, were granted automatic right of West German citizenship even if these so-called ethnic Germans spoke no German and had no other point of contact with modern German culture.

I am sure the residue of this second-class status is contributes to the low performance in schools. As to why German politicians are unable to address this openly, I couldn’t say.

I have to say that as someone who has worked a great deal with immigrants to the United States, of all classes and backgrounds, that I have experienced a great deal more friendliness, hospitality, and real willingness to work through cultural difference on the part of “new Americans” than I have seen the average US-born American willing to exert. Also a whole heck of a lot more respect for education and educators.

2nd.
I have always tried to be open minded about people, and judge each person on their individual merits (or lack thereof). Will Rogers once said
“I never met a man I didn’t Like.” Actually, Will would then explain that after he became familiar with someone he might not like him, but at the moment he first met the man, he liked him.

I am somewhat racist. And a tad sexist. And used to be quite homophobic (had often used the term “gay” or “fag” in a derogatory way, and even now by habit or to be “cool” around my friends). And the thing where I think all old people are bad drivers, i have a really bad case of that.

I’m not proud of my prejudice. But what can I do except strive to be conscious of my personal stereotypes and try to treat people more fairly as a result of this (painful) knowledge about myself?

But to tell someone he or she has just behaved badly is not the same as proclaiming that all people of a given group are “like that” simply because they’re part of that group. If the dominant group behavior is intolerable, that’s still no call to make it personal and directed at Type.

This means we have to think about each instance. People like categories, it makes it easier to function, less confusing. Unfortunately, people should not be made to inhabit a category based in surface features.

One thing that does get my goat along these lines is how the rhetoric of “cultural sensitivity” is always directed at Us. Americans, implicitly, have no culture, and because we are who we are we must be made to feel guilty for our cultural insensitivity. But when we are similarly violated—treating women as property, I think, is bad thing, and we (at least verbally) claim it so, which makes it a cultural ideal—and told we should be more sensitive, my reaction is mixed. Often, I’m inclined to agree, but just as often I’m inclined to say “What about our culture, asshole? Your behavior is insulting to our culture.”

Intolerance of boorish behavior is not a bad thing. Boorish behavior based on tradition or culture is still boorish behavior, and I see no reason not to label it so. While we may have many things to apologize for, it is nevertheless true that we are taken advantage of by people who maybe ought to think about changing their boorish behavior.

Sadly, I don’t think that racism will ever be obliterated.