How does one know why or how they came to think the way they do. Racists and all the other terms of the narrow minded, say bigot, biased, intolerant, prejudiced all fit but are not acknowledged. Not long ago in a group of people and family many of whom are racists, I mentioned the fact that I had heard several of them say racist comments. Wow you'd would thought I called them evil. None would face it as facing yourself and being honest about yourself is the hardest thing most people face. I gave up mentioning examples as most rationalize comments in a context of explanation without seeing the basic core is assumption about another. As time passed we laughed when we heard the racist assumptions repeated.
"Racism is not about how you look, it is about how people assign meaning to how you look." Robin D.G. Kelley
http://www.justplainpolitics.com/sho...istle-Politics
You can find Celtiguy in the quote below.
Chapter 'The Coloring of America' page 123
"...In a 1990 survey, 29 percent of a national sample of whites grouped blacks as unintelligent-four years before a best-selling book lent this notion a certain respectability with full pseudoscientific trappings. Whites who said they supported antidiscrimination laws in home sales increased from 34 percent in 1973 to 51 percent in 1990, an improvement of 50 percent; but this means that almost half were still not willing to support open housing.
And yet white attitudes may be more ambivalent and flexible than these disturbing results convey. In 1989 Paul M. Sniderman of Stanford University and Thomas Piazza of the University of California, Berkeley, asked a random sample of whites their opinions of blacks (they could choose more than one description). Twenty-six percent said blacks were "irresponsible"; 20 percent, that they were "lazy." An equal number of randomly sampled whites were asked their opinions of blacks only after they had been asked a question about affirmative action: "In a nearby state, an effort is being made to increase dramatically the number of blacks working in state government. This means that a large number of jobs will be reserved for blacks, even if their scores on merit exams are lower than those of whites who are turned down for the job. Do you favor or oppose this policy?" In this population, the number who said blacks were "irresponsible" rose to 43 percent; those who said blacks were "lazy" rose to 31 percent. In other words, the mere mention of affirmative action, albeit attributed to "a nearby state," triggered an increase of more than 50 percent in the number of whites willing to express outright denigration.
One may suspect that the "mere mention" of affirmative action signaled to veiled bigots that the researchers might be receptive to otherwise tabooed expressions of racial hostility. It is well known that survey interviewees are reluctant to own up to bigotry. But when Sniderman and Piazza's interviewers argued with their interviewees in either direction, even in a rudimentary way, they could easily sway them, or at least influence the words they were willing to express. The fact that people are flexible on these questions is chilling. But flexibility is preferable to dyed-in-the-wool prejudice. It creates latitude for political leadership. For "mere mentions" are not confined to survey experiments."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/..._Common_Dreams
"The main hypothesis concerning group-think is this: the more amiability and espirt de corps among the members of an in-group of policymakers the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and the dehumanizing actions directed at out-groups." Irving L. Janis in 'Sanctions for Evil'
PS I'm getting ready to donate a bunch of books to our library and one is "On Being Certain" by Robert A. Burton. Ironic huh. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...-being-certain
Wanna make America great, buy American owned, made in the USA, we do. AF Veteran, INFJ-A, I am not PC.
"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it." Voltaire
Reply With Quote
Truthmatters
Originally Posted by Celticguy
Posting Rules
Bookmarks