What does it mean to be a bigot these days? How and when can you definitively say that a person is a bigot in a way that's a serious serious problem in today's society? Many of us believe that everyone is a little bit bigoted now and then, in our moments of weakness, when we're extremely angry, when we lose control. So if we all have it in us at some level, how do we use the word "bigot" in a way that's actually meaningful?
I think it has to be about whether one's moment of weakness can be said to be the vast exception to your character, whether you personally regret and have the capacity to fully take responsibility for and make amends for that moment of bigotry, and quite frankly how often these episodes occur and the level of their seriousness and impact on other people's lives. I also think that shocking bigoted episodes as younger people probably signal an unhealthy tendency. When you get bigotry in you at a young age, it takes hold in a way it can't when you grow up right.
In many ways measuring bigotry is about perspective. Where are you coming from? How to you gauge it?
Me? - I'm probably the most average slab of average you could ask for. I'm probably a pretty good litmus test in America - the most average person in a room full of average people. I grew up in a midwestern/southern-ish state. I wasn't rich, I wasn't poor. I grew up around people of all kinds of backgrounds, but largely it was amongst whites, Christian whites. My life growing up was suburbs and mini-malls. It would have been the kind of thing you'd make a movie of if you were trying to portray an absolutely normal, middle of the road, unexceptional in every way American childhood.
I didn't see much hatred on the basis of color or sexual orientation, if any at all. That sort of thing came later, maybe in college when people were drinking too much at a frat party where exclusion was what it was about. In fact I can't say I remember any such instances of violent physical bigotry as a person under the age of 20, although I do remember some teasing due to people's body shape (ie their weight). There were fights, but those fights were about sports, or girls (and boys), or material belongings. They were never about bigotry that I can recall. Not physical stuff.
I didn't know anyone who beat up a kid or held a kid down and cut their hair for being gay or effeminate. I didn't know anyone who physically abused another kid for seeming effeminate at all. If anything, effeminate boys were seen as potentially a little vulnerable or sensitive, and they were likely treated with a bit more care, like you might a girl - irrespective of whether that's appropriate or not. Sure, maybe some people thought something unfair about an effeminate boy, but the idea of physically abusing them would have seemed both sadistic and unhealthy amongst the people I grew up around - again, mainly church-going Christians. It would have been a pretty nasty thing to physically abuse a vulnerable person like that.
I didn't know anyone who ever tricked a blind person into running into anything either. The very idea of doing something like that seems totally alien to me, as it would to most of the people in my community growing up. If someone did it, I can't imagine how it would have been funny. The person pulling such a prank would very quickly have been shunned and thought of as kind of sick. Abusing the disabled doesn't really seem funny to me or to the kinds of people I knew and know.
I didn't know very many people who would have said to a black person that they didn't believe in scholarships for minorities based on their status as a minority. Most of the people I grew up around had been to the "black side of town" and they at least knew how tough it was even if it wasn't something they planned on doing much about personally. People's dads were Republican, but they weren't cruel. People believed in hard work, but the idea of saying you don't believe in trying to maintain a certain percentage of minorities in government jobs, gov't contracting, and at universities - well, let's just say that'd be a bit much for the white Christians I grew up around. Of course those things are necessary in most if not all cases.
I didn't know anyone who used the phrase "tar baby" to refer to a "sticky situation," even though technically you can use it that way. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE knew better. To not know better would have been a sign that someone was either trying to be clever, and a bit racist, or was so racially ignorant that they were probably a bit racist.
I also didn't know anyone who's church baptized Jews in-absentia, knew about it for years as a leading powerful member (a Bishop, no less), and kept silent about it.
I definitely, and I mean definitely didn't know anyone who would use a highly visible public platform to align themselves with Donald Trump and birtherism, the most disgusting and degrading low level of racism I've ever seen in a presidential contest in my lifetime certainly. How disgusting and irresponsible (and shameful) is that? Is that really what you want the world to think of the USA?!?
So, how do you know when someone is a bigot in regular old America these days?
I guess after awhile, you just know.
Wed May 30, 2012 at 12:47 PM PT: Wow, cool! Thanks for putting my diary in the Community Spotlight. That's amazing.