On prejudice
I am prejudiced.
I am not proud of it.
I wish I weren't.
I won't go into the details about which groups of people I hold prejudgments toward. Let's just say I have an average number of prejudices, some common, some not so much. I wasn't raised to be prejudiced - in fact, my parents (especially my mother) were rather strict about the subject and clamped down on any utterance that came from me while growing up that even brushed up against the bias fence, whether the issue was color, gender, smarts, looks, physical stature, whatever. I was brought up to know that it is wrong, and I believe it is wrong to this day.
And yet I am prejudiced anyway.
I could try and defend it by saying that all of my prejudices have come from real-world experiences. And in fact, they have - real world experiences with specific individuals which I then have wrongfully generalized to whole classes of people. That is why I find this xkcd cartoon so moving:
As a father of four daughters I feel anger at anyone who would generalize "girls suck at math" from one observation. Yet often my own prejudices are based on no more data than that, perhaps with some assistance from the media and my own culture's expectations. Still, no excuses.
This isn't to say that culture doesn't matter, that there aren't observable differences between different groups of people, often self-defined and self-enforced by the group. Denying that would be a stupid thing to claim and I reject anyone who tries. Nor am I saying that I believe that there are no material differences between cultures, that "It's all good". More to the point I believe it would be more correct given Man's fallen nature to argue "We all suck" (and that includes my own culture). Even so I reject most post-modern approaches that approach life as if there is no ultimate truth, there is no ultimate good, there is no ultimate knowledge - in my opinion such an approach rejects the existence of God, by definition. So I can look at a culture and identify good things and bad. And since a culture is nothing more than the grouping of people who self-identify with a given set of norms, behaviors, attitudes and actions, one could almost argue that prejudice is nothing more than a clear-eyed observing of the bad parts.
But the point is this - we can have an awareness of things that may be negative (if we feel we're qualified to judge such things), but we must never generalize such an awareness so that we prejudge any specific person. To turn it around a little, I like how Kay says it in Men in Black:
Jesus requires us to look around us and not see people - He wants us to see persons. Lots and lots of persons. All in the image of God. Jesus is a person. He wants us to have a personal relationship with Him. And by following Him we are to have a personal relationship with everyone else, too. Every one else, too. Prejudice is the antithesis of that. It gets in the way of a personal relationship with someone because of the group of people they are in. It kills love before it has a chance to take root.
Therefore I must work to conquer it. May the three persons of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit help me do just that.
I am not proud of it.
I wish I weren't.
I won't go into the details about which groups of people I hold prejudgments toward. Let's just say I have an average number of prejudices, some common, some not so much. I wasn't raised to be prejudiced - in fact, my parents (especially my mother) were rather strict about the subject and clamped down on any utterance that came from me while growing up that even brushed up against the bias fence, whether the issue was color, gender, smarts, looks, physical stature, whatever. I was brought up to know that it is wrong, and I believe it is wrong to this day.
And yet I am prejudiced anyway.
I could try and defend it by saying that all of my prejudices have come from real-world experiences. And in fact, they have - real world experiences with specific individuals which I then have wrongfully generalized to whole classes of people. That is why I find this xkcd cartoon so moving:
As a father of four daughters I feel anger at anyone who would generalize "girls suck at math" from one observation. Yet often my own prejudices are based on no more data than that, perhaps with some assistance from the media and my own culture's expectations. Still, no excuses.
This isn't to say that culture doesn't matter, that there aren't observable differences between different groups of people, often self-defined and self-enforced by the group. Denying that would be a stupid thing to claim and I reject anyone who tries. Nor am I saying that I believe that there are no material differences between cultures, that "It's all good". More to the point I believe it would be more correct given Man's fallen nature to argue "We all suck" (and that includes my own culture). Even so I reject most post-modern approaches that approach life as if there is no ultimate truth, there is no ultimate good, there is no ultimate knowledge - in my opinion such an approach rejects the existence of God, by definition. So I can look at a culture and identify good things and bad. And since a culture is nothing more than the grouping of people who self-identify with a given set of norms, behaviors, attitudes and actions, one could almost argue that prejudice is nothing more than a clear-eyed observing of the bad parts.
But the point is this - we can have an awareness of things that may be negative (if we feel we're qualified to judge such things), but we must never generalize such an awareness so that we prejudge any specific person. To turn it around a little, I like how Kay says it in Men in Black:
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Jesus requires us to look around us and not see people - He wants us to see persons. Lots and lots of persons. All in the image of God. Jesus is a person. He wants us to have a personal relationship with Him. And by following Him we are to have a personal relationship with everyone else, too. Every one else, too. Prejudice is the antithesis of that. It gets in the way of a personal relationship with someone because of the group of people they are in. It kills love before it has a chance to take root.
Therefore I must work to conquer it. May the three persons of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit help me do just that.
4 comments:
Jim,
I liked this post on prejudice - especially what seems to be a widespread tendency to say "girls suck at math."
In my family, it ran the other way - back to my great-grandmother it was the women balancing the checkbook and the men making extravagant purchases to throw off the family budget.
So my daughter, 6, doesn't even listen to such nonsense. It's more like I have to educate and protect her from picking up any prejudices against others - from me or anyone else.
Competition is a bigger issue. With my children it's to heck with what everybody else says about them because then they put up a united front. But at home, it gets to be more like the "Anything you can do I can do better" song in "Annie get your Gun."
Sam,
Yeah, the competitiveness thing among the kids drives me crazy sometimes. Part of it I think is having no siblings of my own.
And note - I hope it was clear I wasn't saying "Girls suck at math" - that is NOT one of my prejudices. But I have gotten to a lot of prejudices that are mine on no more experiential basis than in that cartoon.
Thanks as always for commenting - and hey, your blog is off your profile. Did you take it down?
No, I think I forgot to put in the URL. Not sure what happened. It's at http://samwrites2.wordpress.com as always. I need to get back in the discipline of putting up entries at least twice a week. I write that much just commenting on other blogs I like.
-Sam
Sam,
Thanks for the link. I was following your blog periodically by hand. Now it's in my reader so it won't get lost.
And yes, just like I'm pushing Chaotic Hammer (or should I just call him, "Hammer"? :-), it's a time-honored blogging practice to blog a comment about someone else's blog, rather than just leave a long comment there. That does two things:
1) It gets you blogging more.
2) It gives the originating blog link love with Technorati and other stat sites.
Both good (if you care about such things). So now, I choose to comment when I basically have a one paragraph or less "Me, too!" blog, and then save my longer comments for my own blog, pointing back to the originating blog. If nothing else, it helps give you something to write about when you say, "I have nothing to write about!" and then go leave 10 paragraphs worth of comments on three blogs. :-)
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