Tag: Prejudice

Bigot, Terrorist, Narrowminded

 

Everyone in elementary school knew me as “Eckel the elephant.” I was short and fat, or, as was acceptable to say in those days, I was considered “stocky.” Before I grew six inches one summer, I was a roly-poly kid who couldn’t climb a rope in gym class to save his life. The fact that I remember how I felt decades ago gives credence to the fact that name-calling hurts. Sticks and stones do break bones and words will always hurt people.

But I would like to suggest that the act of name-calling has not stopped. It continues in adulthood. When you call someone “narrowminded,” “a terrorist,” or a “bigot,” for instance, you are saying more about yourself than the person you wish to debase. To describe another person and their perspective in negative terms only does two things: it alienates you from the other person and displays your true character.

Take the word “bigot,” for instance. The word itself is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “a person who has strong, unreasonable beliefs, who does not like other people who have different beliefs.” Or take the definition from Merriam-Webster. A bigot is “a person who is intolerantly devoted to her prejudices and treats members of other groups with hatred and intolerance.” So, when you call someone a “bigot,” who is the “bigot”?

QOTD: Henry Flipper Looks Forward

 

MY four years were drawing to a close. They had been years of patient endurance and hard and persistent work, interspersed with bright oases of happiness and gladness and joy, as well as weary barren wastes of loneliness, isolation, unhappiness, and melancholy. I believe I have discharged—I know I have tried to do so—every duty faithfully and conscientiously. It had been a sort of bittersweet experience, this experimental life of mine at West Point. It was almost over, and whatever of pure sweetness, whatever of happiness, or whatever reward fortune had in store for me, was soon to become known.—Henry Ossian Flipper, the Colored Cadet at West Point

Henry Ossian Flipper was the first black man to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point. He did so on this date in 1877. He had been born a slave twenty-one years before that. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Buffalo Soldiers. While he had troubles and faced prejudice, he went on to a long professional career in various capacities with governments and as an engineer. He was also an author, writing his first book the year after graduation while at Fort Sill.

Member Post

 

This may not be the place, but I have a half-baked theory I want to throw out there, since the left is pursuing the reconstruction of our language. (Starting with all conservatives being on the Hillary list of phobics culminating in “deplorables.”)  Here goes: We are inundated with these references, and once “racist” started to […]

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Family Alienations

 

I looked up a (thirty-something) relative today on Facebook. I won’t get into the detailed branching.

Still, I thought I might want to connect and introduce this young educated lady to another person, not for romantic reasons since she has a boyfriend but since the man I know is isolated in that city and she might be kind enough to include him among her acquaintances and perhaps she might know of a matching lady. Things looked okay for a fair amount of scrolling through photos etc. Then it flashed before me.

Member Post

 

I hardly know how to use this material, between reactions of hilarity and despondency. But I thought it might make a nice challenge here. It appears that Black Lives Matter has come down from the mountain and issued 10 new commandents (for white people). I wasn’t aware of this and I’m not sure how “official” […]

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Member Post

 

Schools should be places where the attainment of knowledge and the love for it is nurtured unto no end.  Students should be seen as sponges that can soak up all that they hear and see within a classroom.  Now, one must not be naive about the difficulty of any teacher’s main objective: helping students reach […]

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The Response to the Maryland Rape Case Is a Stain on the Right

 

We are all, justly, very sensitive to and sick of charges of “racism” being thrown around promiscuously at the right for any and every deviation from leftist orthodoxy.  But just as we say to Muslims about terrorism, our ability to object with credibility depends on a willingness to police our own.

Our media, including many of our Ricochet luminaries are failing in that task right now by joining in the hysteria over the undoubtedly horrific rape of a 9th grade girl in Rockville, Maryland.

Member Post

 

Reading Oblomov’s excellent post on assimilation got me thinking (always a scary thing, I know). It reminded me of a recurring thought that I’ve had for many years now. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of TV and went to church and public school from the very late 60s through the 70s. […]

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True Prejudices, Rational Prejudices, and Conservative Philosophy

 

ThinkerRoger Scruton as quoted by Daniel Hannan on a podcast here on Ricochet: “The role of a conservative thinker is to reassure the people that their prejudices are true.”

It’s a wonderful quote, but I’m tempted to modify it: The role of a conservative thinker is to reassure the people that their prejudices are rational. I think the challenge to — for example — disapproval of embryonic stem-cell research is rarely “You are mistaken,” but rather “Your view is only held by nutjobs who hate science.”

A question for the Ricochetti:

The Tolerance of Intolerance

 

Germany Comet Landing ShirtMany of y’all have heard of the furor over the tacky — and I think, unprofessional — shirt worn by the Rosetta comet mission’s Project Scientist. Various feminists took offense at the cartoon women on the man’s shirt as being misogynistic and claimed that this kind of thing is what keeps women from going into the physical sciences as a career. The pile-on got so heavy that the man was nearly reduced to tears in an on-camera apology.

Yet even now, it hasn’t stopped. Among my fellow astronomers, there is a lot of talk about writing an official condemnation of Matt Taylor by the American Astronomical Society on the issue, as the Astronomical Society of Australia has done. While I think the shirt was in poor taste, the volume of ink being spilled talking about it is way out of proportion to the offense, and the claim that this is evidence of astronomers’ “misogyny” is ridiculous.

Now, a few days later, our biggest professional discussion group had someone post a link from Media Matters to a joke making fun of Fox News. While the joke is mildly funny and only made me roll my eyes a little, it demonstrates the comfort my fellow academics feel in making fun of those of different beliefs. In the discussion that followed, we were told that it’s actually justifiable for us professionals to openly make fun of people of particular political beliefs or religions. (For the record, this joke didn’t bother me; I’m really talking about much worse behavior I have seen in this crowd.)