Bigotry and Interaction

Discussion in 'Free Thoughts' started by S.A.M., Dec 4, 2009.

  1. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Have you ever limited interaction with any person due to prejudice related to his race, colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation or appearance?

    Were you ever forced to interact with anyone from a category you were prejudiced against?

    If yes, did this change what you thought about that category?
     
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  3. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I once worked with a guy who had swastikas drawn on his tennis shoes. I severely limited any interaction with him
    So, I guess that was based on appearance.
     
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  5. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Often.
    Lots of gay guys stop talking to me when they find out I'm straight.

    All the time.
    Idiots.
    (That's the category, not a comment).

    Nope.
     
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  7. mike47 Banned Banned

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    I never judge people from their race, religion , colour, sexual orientation or sexual craziness,.....etc. I take the person as he/ she is . If I realized that the person is no good then I run as fast as I can....

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    .
     
  8. Ganymede Valued Senior Member

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    I have friends of every race, culture, and political persuasion. Although I tend to be elitist as to who'll i'll hang out with. Funny thing is, I have a lot of far right Republican friends. Great guys as long as we don't talk about politics.
     
  9. takethewarhome midnatt klarhet Registered Senior Member

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  10. Dirty Dan And knowing is half the battle Registered Senior Member

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    My place of employment..I'm the minority, white male and funny thing is....I kinda like it. My co-workers are 3 Laosians(not sure the spelling), 2 Hispanics and well, there is another white female. We all get along great. Very good people who are humble, kind, respectfu and very generous sharing their ethnic foods from their countries which are very very delicous!
     
  11. Varda The Bug Lady Valued Senior Member

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    When I first moved to th United States, I came with a lot of prejudice, thinking that they would be mostly all narrow minded and stupid.

    Very few have proved me wrong, so now my prejudice is structured around interactions and experience.
     
  12. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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  13. nietzschefan Thread Killer Valued Senior Member

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    I gotta agree being "the white guy" in a workplace, in a country where I am the so-called "Visible majority"(bullshit), sure makes me feel at ease. People can joke around(even about race/ethnicity) and no one get pissed. It sure helps if you can handle Indian food and semi-real Chinese food.
     
  14. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    I know i hear it talked about a lot but at the moment i dont realy know what prejudice is... an yet i have the feelin that i am... anyhow... escept for som kin-folk... i have avoided people who slobber... seem unpredictably crazy or smell bad.!!!

    I was perty much forced to work wit a crazy guy once... he was moved from area to area cause people complaned about him... he only had 1 volume "LOUD" when he talked or laffed... but my attitude about his catigory didnt change... i didnt like bein aroun him in the beginin or the end when i quit that job.!!!

    HTH<------------

    PS
    Is it time for this thred to be locked yet.???
     
  15. scifes In withdrawal. Valued Senior Member

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    yes, sciforums, atheists.
     
  16. cluelusshusbund + Public Dilemma + Valued Senior Member

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    Im a scifourm atheist type... how does you'r answr relate to me.???
     
  17. Norsefire Salam Shalom Salom Registered Senior Member

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    No, but I tend not to want to associate with people that don't share my standards.
     
  18. Mrs.Lucysnow Valued Senior Member

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    Liar!!!

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    Closet atheist lover! I'm reporting you to Sam.
     
  19. (Q) Encephaloid Martini Valued Senior Member

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    So, you answered the question in the affirmative that you are prejudiced against atheists. Well done. You have demonstrated once again the bigotry of your cult.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    How exactly do you distinguish prejudice from value/preference?
     
  21. Alexander8 Registered Member

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    Ironically, all our lives we are forced to interact with people of different races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and appearances, yet no one ever asks if this causes prejudice.
     
  22. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    No. Even though my parents couldn't shake off the racism that was widespread in their generation (they'd be 100 next year), they pulled off the astounding feat of hiding it from me until I was a teenager and had shaped my own personality. When I was seven my mother directed me to go play with a child in a hospital playroom who didn't look like me and was being ignored by all the other kids who did look like me. It was eight years later before I realized how difficult that must have been for her. They were such irredeemable assholes in so many other major ways that it's still hard to think kindly of them, but they did a couple of really important things right and that was one of them.
    I assume this discussion is meant to be limited to the categories you have defined, even though other members are straying from them.
    I doubt it was his appearance that put you off, but rather the inference that a guy who decorates himself with swastikas is a casual racist, if not an actual neo-Nazi. I'm sure that six decades after the Holocaust there are kids in America--a land that compulsively ignores history--who don't really understand what the swastika symbolized then. But as long as there are still people walking around with tattoos from Buchenwald I think we're allowed to call those kids oafs and to ostracize them simply because we don't enjoy discoursing with oafs. "Not suffering gladly the presence of fools" is not a category of prejudice in Sam's paradigm so you're off the hook. But the day will come when the swastika--which has a long and honorable history--is restored to its place among human cultural images. Probably not in my lifetime but you may have to suck it up and get over it.
    Political views are also not in Sam's list. If you don't like to hang out with people who disagree with you about things that are important to you, that's not prejudice.
    It's spelled Laotian. However, people from Laos prefer to be called simply Lao. The way we pronounce the word Laotian, with the palatalized T, it sounds like the French words lao chien, which means "Lao dog," and that is exactly what they were often called during the French occupation of Indochina. I can dig that.
    "Prejudice" literally means "pre-judged." It is to form a derogatory opinion about a person you don't know yet, based exclusively on stereotypes of a large demographic group to which he happens to belong, and to treat that person (or the entire demographic group) discourteously or with hostility, based on that prejudgment.

    Obviously there is a fuzzy line to draw here. In a Melting Pot like the United States it is prejudice to assume that a person who appears to be of African ancestry will exhibit the customs and attitudes stereotyped on the African-American demographic. Even if the stereotypes turn out to be largely true (I'm saying this purely for the sake of the line of reasoning), nonetheless huge numbers of people in that demographic group have been raised differently, are assimilated, are of mixed ancestry, or may come from Greece or China where they picked up entirely different customs and attitudes.

    On the other hand, if a person is a member of the Watchtower and Bible Tract Society ("Jehovah's Witnesses") it's not unreasonable to assume that he will exhibit the customs and attitudes stereotyped on that demographic. If he has let it be known that he is a member of that group, rather than the rebellious child of a religious family, it would be very unusual for him not to practice their aggressive evangelism, which would presumably annoy you. So that assumption doesn't easily qualify as prejudice.

    And besides, Sam carefully avoided including religion in her list anyway!
    This is not prejudice. You are basing your opinion of them on the evidence provided by your own senses, not assumptions derived from experiences with other people. Most of us are offended by slobbering and lack of personal hygiene, and avoiding the crazy can be rational self-protection.
    Again, Sam left religion off of her list. Most of us avoid the company of people who disagree with us on things we consider fundamental. I wouldn't want to spend time with someone who thinks it's okay to eat dogs or mutilate his wife's clitoris, and does not put those beliefs into practice only to avoid the wrath of my fellow citizens. I can understand someone not seeking out my company because he finds my intolerance of his beliefs and my categorization of them as primitive to be demeaning.

    You and I regard religion as nothing more than a matter of philosophy so we don't mind hanging out with religious people and having dinner with them when we get tired of arguing. But to them it's part of who they are and by rejecting their religion we are rejecting a major part of their identity.

    Not to like us is not bigotry. Frankly I think Sam was wise to leave religion off of that list. If the assumption is statistically reasonable that a person who freely identifies himself with a religious population will have certain traits that you find impossible to tolerate because they demean you, then it is something other than prejudice to dislike him in advance.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2009
  23. decons scrambled egg Registered Senior Member

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    It is true that constant communication and contact is the only way to negate bigotry.

    If, on the other hand, one feels the urge to "limit interaction", one owes oneself to do it with every "race, colour, ethnicity", and "sexual orientation" since miraculous human evolution managed to distribute the idiocity and great alienation under the skies gene (IAGAUTS-G) proportionately on the lands.
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2009

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