Prejudice

[Ed62]

I think the day will someday come when there will not be prejudice, except for a *very* small minority, because of skin color or sexual preference. Which one do you think will be the first one able to claim that distinction?

Ed

[Mr__Bill]

Well Ed, I think that we are all prejudice and about lots of different things. As for the color, sex thing, I have to admit that I much prefer female of a color somewhere between way to white and way to dark and I prefer them younger than me too. I am however racing towards geezerdom so that leaves most on the younger side.

I think that we have seen at this election a willingness of the people to accept a black man over a woman. I think it will be very hard for most to overcome the feeling that a woman should concentrate on raising nurturing children. Thus most men will see a woman as a mother and will as an adult resent 'mommie' telling him what to do. Oops, the wife says I have to go help with dinner so I had better end this.

Bill

[Daryl]

We will always judge a man or woman by their substance, too bad that judgment has come to mean a judgement against their race or sex.

[Hoover]

I don't believe that we are there yet on either issue. Yes we elected an African-American as president, but California prop 8 passed. I would like to think that we are past this, but there are many who totally resist any change to the status quo.

[dbhost]

To be the "Devil's" advocate as it were. On the sexual preference thing. Is that "prejudice" or expressing strongly held religious beliefs? So is not forcing people to accept others behavior choices discrimination against a person's faith?

Oh you must be a bad person because you are a Cristian, or Muslim, or Jew and believe that homosexuality is a sin...

Sorry for taking this thread to religion, but that was its inevitable end...

[stormdog74]

To be the "Devil's" advocate as it were. On the sexual preference thing. Is that "prejudice" or expressing strongly held religious beliefs? So is not forcing people to accept others behavior choices discrimination against a person's faith?

Oh you must be a bad person because you are a Cristian, or Muslim, or Jew and believe that homosexuality is a sin...

Sorry for taking this thread to religion, but that was its inevitable end...

To me this is the odd thing - if your religion is against homosexuality, then I could understand that you would not engage in homosexual acts. However, why is it that some people feel the need to tell others how to behave? After all, isn't judgment reserved for one's God?

Sometimes it seems that we are all for individual rights - unless it is somebody else's and we find it personally objectionable.

[cabinetman]

Sorry for taking this thread to religion, but that was its inevitable end...

My sentiments exactly. How hard is it to stay away from these subjects? Aren't we due for pictures of the bulldog on the skateboard, or the overloaded car? I'd even settle for the "What's your favorite wood"?
.

[RayintheUK]

My sentiments exactly.

Mine too! The subject matter is bound to cause division, Ed62. We got to politics in one reply and to religion in four - both of which were inevitable.

Ray.

[crokett]

Guys, it wasn't 'inevitable' for this thread to go the way it did. Likely, but not inevitable. Right now I am thinking of 4 different replies to Ed's question, none of which have anything to do with religion or politics. Here's one of them:

I think the bias towards sexual preference will disappear first. It does not have the angst-ridden history that skin color does and it is a whole lot less overt.

I will leave this thread open, for now. If your answer has anything to do with religion or politics, then don't post it.

[Ed62]

If your answer has anything to do with religion or politics, then don't post it.

Thanks, David. This thread was not supposed to be in the nature of politics or religion. It was meant to be of human attitude. You can interject politics or religion in most any discussion. Please don't do it.

Ed

[radhak]

I think race has been fought over for too long, and has finally reached a point where it's not even easy discussing it without being branded 'racist'. And I see that positively : it makes people uncomfortable speaking their mind when it goes counter-culture (which now means if they denigrate anybody/anything racially); it's a sort of reluctant progress, but it sure is in the right direction.

On the other hand, the fight for equality over s.p. (too long to type ) is just started. the current elections bear both of my points out. we are gonna see a period this point onwards where any 'deviancy' in s.p. is gonna be opposed by parts within all races, bringing them together.

In other words, the racial divide is gonna fall faster now on, just to keep the s.p. divide up.

Till we have something else .... X-men, anybody?

[jackellis]

Tough choice for me.

I work for a woman, I work with a number of women and our friends include a number of women, almost all of whom are smart and as competent as any of the men. I can point to a gazillion examples in business, politics, academia and research where women excel as much as any man.

If by skin color we're talking about African Americans and Hispanic Americans, the record is a little more mixed. There are plenty of blacks and hispanics who have been quite successful in all walks of life but in a culture that's so far been dominated by white faces, young folks have been disadvantaged by a lack of good role models. That's about to change.

This is just a crazy theory but a lot of our social institutions are centered on belonging to a group of like-minded people. In a cultural sense, it wasn't that long ago that we belonged to a tribe, looked out for the interests of the tribe, and did everything we could to strengthen the tribe against other competing tribes. For that reason, we tend to be suspicious of people who aren't like us or the people in our social and economic circle. In an environment were competition starts even before conception, we're driven to self-interest and putting competitors at a disadvantage, especially when they seem to be different than we are. When it comes to men vs. women, I think some men are a bit afraid of losing their status as king of the castle. When it comes to color, well let's just say that the Europeans from whom many of us are descendants had an unrealistic sense of themselves and perhaps some of that is still in our genes.

Let's face it, our world changes all the time. Fighting change is a losing proposition. Better to embrace change and thrive.

[radhak]

Reading others' posts, I realize Ed's Poll should have had a third option : Gender Bias.

Sexual Preference is on an entirely different plane from gender bias. Some might be completely accepting a role-reversal (woman boss, male home-maker), but not able to understand a gay person.

So in that list, I'd see the order in which acceptance increases in the years to come :

(a) Race
(b) Gender (which means, more people will prefer a male of different race as a boss to a woman boss).
(c) Sexual Preference

Of course, things get cloudy when we talk 'discrimination', as that goes beyond jobs and supervisor/subordinate.

[leehljp]

I wonder what would happen if we were all blind or blindfolded, - a persons color could be masked, but by and large the gender differences will always be obvious. (Father of 3 great girls [now adults] speaking!)

However, I remember an interview with Charlton Heston once and he talked about the making of the Planet of the Apes. After a few days into the shooting of the movie, an unusual thing began to happen - For lunch and for breaks, people, regardless of their own race began to segregate into groups according to their suits. Monkeys to monkeys, apes to apes, orangutans to orangutans.

Something that I have noticed is that strong prejudice is usually brought out in the open much more in societies where individualism is emphasized. (Individualism meaning that person's uniqueness is the basis for their identity). But in "group decision" cultures where the person's identity is from the group - prejudice happens much more often in a very subtle (often hidden) but deep and sometimes dangerous way.

[dbhost]

I am trying very carefully to steer away from religion and politics, and this subject matter is VERY difficult to say anything at all without bringing those two subjects up. In the effort to keep our nice forum clear of those subjects I will have to simply stay the following.

I think that many people of all walks of life see race to be simply how we are made, or evolved depending on your POV. And in AMERICAN society it has become far less acceptable to discriminate on the basis of things that are in born.

I also see that many people still see sexual preference as exactly that, preference. A choice. Whether or not I agree with that is not relevant, it's just the ideas I see commonly out in my community.

So I do believe that prejudice based on race or ethnicity will be history long before prejudice based on SP.