Bigotry, Definitions, and Point-Scoring

Let's just say racism, there are a host of analogous forms of bigotry, but let's start there. I think it's a safe assumption that we all agree racism is a problem. Even people who do racist things are quick to say, "It's not racist." That seems to me to be a small piece of evidence that suggests maybe we all do. 

I'm sure, if I scramble, I can find a few fringe people out there who are proud to be labelled racist, but I'm going to act under the assumption that's a very small minority, and for the purposes I'm after at the moment, a negligible one.

So we all agree racism is a problem. That must mean that, if it's possible to eliminate, we'd all think the world would be a better place without it. So, what might eliminating racism look like?

That's where it all goes to hell. The answers to that question are myriad, and they're all predicated of diverging concepts of what racism is. We don't, I sure hope, want to claim that racism is subjective or relativized. We'd rather all be talking about the same thing. But it isn't sufficiently clear that we are. 

Let me give a wild, beetle-in-the-box example to exaggerate what I mean. If I idiosyncratically call roses "baseball games", and you are unaware of this idiosyncrasy, we might get into a very serious argument about whether or not I saw a dozen baseball games in a vase.

What we think the meaning of the word is has huge impacts on what we think should be done if we want to eliminate the phenomenon, just as we might have radically different strategies if we both want to eliminate baseball games. 

So my first point is that we'd better be clear what we're talking about.

My second point is, I hope, a bit broader.

Whatever we think racism is, we must at least acknowledge that it involves very deep-seated, engrained attitudes about people, some we might not even be aware of consciously. These kinds of attitudes do not simply fall off overnight. It requires years (decades? generations?) to identify and acknowledge them, confront them, deal with them, eliminate them. A well-crafted pithy jab simply isn't up to the task. 

And here's where I hope to get broader: the idea that there's an Us and a Them, and that by making these little jabs at Them will "take down" those views we find so contrary to our own doesn't just miss the point. It's positively counterproductive. Across the spectrum--Us and Them--there is work to be done sniffing out these attitudes in ourselves and setting to work on them. Point-scoring does nothing to aid this process, it causes us to bury these attitudes even deeper. It polarizes the conversation and pushes diverging points of view to unnecessary extremes. It prevents the process. 

(I would say something similar about political discourse. Then again, one could argue that toeing the party line is another form of bigotry).

I don't have a nice clean solution to conclude with, because that's the nature of the thing. To assume otherwise is dangerous and arrogant. However, Voltaire does come to mind: "Il faut cultiver notre jardin."