Open bigotry

[steuard]

I'm clearly naive and idealistic, but I continue to be astounded when I see mainstream public figures spewing blatant bigotry and hate and fear. I'm not talking Mel Gibson here: his racist outbursts have generally been publicly condemned by just about everyone (including himself, in a series of increasingly threadbare attempts to apologize). I'm not even talking about the gay marriage debate for the most part: most mainstream opponents of gay rights at least make some attempt to hide their prejudice behind rational-sounding arguments. I'm talking about cases where someone makes overtly bigoted statements and substantial fractions of the public and the media nod and murmur "good point".

I probably see this sort of blatant bigotry most often in discussions of immigration, but the example that's currently making me shake my head in disbelief is the controversy about building a mosque in New York City near the World Trade Center site. Apparently (and yes, I'm sure this is old news), "National Republican leaders, like the former House speaker, Newt Gringrich, and Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee, assailed the proposal, calling it offensive." Their objection, as far as I can tell, is simply that because the Sept. 11 terrorists were crazy, fanatical Muslims, we shouldn't... er... let any Muslims congregate near the site? Or something?

I'll be honest: I don't even follow the supposed logic here. I have not come up with any way of understanding this position that doesn't boil down to the twin claims that "We think all Muslims are the same" and "Muslims do not deserve full citizenship in this country." The former is based on an egregious logical error. The latter is based on an astounding failure to understand our nation's bedrock principles. And both very openly reflect an unfounded hate for a specific group of people.

I do not comprehend how a mature person with any sense of public decorum would be willing to make this sort of statement repeatedly. I do not comprehend how a mature person can listen to these statements and not immediately think, "Whoa, that's over the line," the same way they do about Mel Gibson. But as noted, I'm naive and idealistic. So you jaded folks out there: how can this possibly be seen as acceptable in a civil society?

Comments

[spoonless.livejournal.com]

The human brain works in associations. It sees mimes, it thinks clowns. It sees a mosque, it thinks Osama.
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It simply means acknowledging the reality of how the human mind works, of what reminds people of what, and of the simple tastelessness of using the site of a horror to remind people (fairly or not) of those who perpetrated the horror.

I think you have some good points here--the clown analogy was clever and insightful. However there is a certain irony here that I think I must point out. Change out the names and particular details and keep the structure of what you're saying the same, and the basic point you're making sounds very similar to what might dub a doctrine of political correctness. That is, the anti-libertarian position that public policy should be used to counteract irrational pyschology, rather than just expecting people to act rationally on their own.

I'm a little unclear on one thing though. Are you actually suggesting that the practice of Islam (in groups at least) be banned within a certain radius of ground zero? Or are you just saying that it should be allowed, but that it represents bad taste? Hopefully the latter, which I suppose is not really the same as what I'm comparing it to. However it still seems somewhat at odds to me with your views on other things... where you seem to expect a high degree of rationality out of people.

Also--while the clown analogy is pretty clever... it's not perfect. A more perfect analogy would be trying to ban atheists from a region where say, a group of radical communists had attacked someone. A lot of idiot rightwingers associate atheism with communism, and therefore to them atheists are offensive because it reminds them of people like Joseph Stalin. I guess I can understand this, but it also really pisses me off and I wish they would just educate themselves. And I would never go along with a measure that sought to ban some activity based on such an irrational association.

Another (non-perfect) example would be trying to ban Christian churches because of nearby actions of the KKK. Why is this non-perfect? The terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 have no more connection with mainstream Islam than the KKK does to mainstream Christianity. The difference in this case is just that people in America are more aware of the internal differences between different Christian sects whereas they are pretty oblivious to cultures outside of what they are familiar with. So they tend to lump all types of Islam together under one giant umbrella. This is also the place where I think the clown analogy isn't perfect... because in the 9/11-Muslim case we're talking about a much more irrational association than just "one clown reminds me of another clown" or "mime reminds me of clown". Instead, we're talking about an association based on cultural ignorance.