Further to discussions in another thread:

Is bigotry a generational issue?

If younger generations are less bigoted than older generations, why is that?

Can we rely on bigotry to die out as some kind of natural process? Or does it need to be called out and challenged and fought against?

What is bigotry? Is bigotry always wrong?

I think bigotry has been ingrained in our greco-roman-derived cultures to enable us to justify conquering other people and cultures on with the argument that they were uncivilized, backwards, and should be grateful for our intervention.

It hasn't gone away, but re-manifested itself over and over again across generations.

I think the more we become aware of different cultures and perspectives, and the more we see that we can LEARN from other cultures, we can finally start to weed out the roots of bigotry...otherwise it will just continue to exist by mere force of cultural training.

Wow! I wish I could vote for more than one option here.

Bigotry is something that must be pushed back against. What tends to happen is that after the push back starts, later generations do tend to show less bigotry towards the minority in question. Obviously, bigotry still exists in younger generations, but it's less prevalent. The same goes for acceptance. If acceptance didn't exist, things like the civil rights movement in the United States wouldn't have gone anywhere.

Just because bigotry shows less, doesn't mean it is actually less.

I only used the word 'show' because I couldn't think of a better one.

Of course bigotry is still there under the surface. We saw it rise up again when Obama became the Democratic nominee for president in 2008. What I was trying to say was that there are more people that hold opinions such as "Yeah, this person's black. So what?"

The very idea of a black man (or a mixed race man who looks black) becoming president would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

My feeling about the best way to fight bigotry would be education and integration. It's very difficult to hang onto inaccurate stereotypes when you're staring the counter-evidence in the face.

That's the point I was trying to make in the other thread.

It's all in the social forces promoting something.  Before the black civil rights movement, and for many years afterward, it was acceptable to portray African Americans as all the worst things a racist could think of.  Nowadays such portrayals are at least fought hard, if not frowned upon by the community in general.  But the same is not true of Hispanics; Hispanics can be portrayed in all sorts of horrible ways, and as long as you use the phrase "illegal alien" instead of Hispanic or Mexican (which is not the only Spanish-speaking area in the New World, by the way) it "obviously" has nothing to do with race or nationality.  Oh, and the present generation is far more bigoted against Islam than it was before 9-11.  You don't even have to pretend that it's not about religion.  Some people openly proclaim themselves to be bigoted against Islam, and they don't get so much as snark from the white Christian/spiritualistic liberals.  

Even if there has been a reduction in negative portrayals of a certain group of people, that does not prove that people are less prejudiced or bigoted against them.  People on the right wing, both young and old, are always complaining about how they no longer get to say things that are blatantly racist.  And I wouldn't say that the right wing was on it's way out in America.  Progressives are determined to be optimistic about it, but the best we could get into the Whitehouse after a trainwreck like George Bush was a centrist.

This post was last modified: 10-05-2012 06:00 AM by Lang.

Bigotry is something that is taught....

Bigotry is something that people use when they hear what they "think they need to hear"

I think that bigotry will never cease to exist because there will always be people who react not on knowledge, but on emotion and there will always be people who try to elevate themselves above others.

Sepparation of people will never end, but acceptance of them will grow.

Babies have shown a preference for anything that has things in common with the baby itslef or has preferences that the baby shares.  Humans as a species categorise most things as "us and them".

Personally I don't believe that the "us and them" will ever disappear, but the "us vs them" will becaome near-obsolete.  Which is good news for everyone.  Everywhere. At least, it will be in the future.

Wow....

What sort of wow?

The "I am amazed" wow

Bigotry is a necessary feature of capitalism.  You need the non-capitalist classes fighting over race and religion and sexual orientation, because otherwise they'll catch wind of their true adversaries and fight for freedom.