You can send a sample of your DNA to ancestry.com or one of its competitors, and they will tell you where your forebears came from, your ethnic mix going back many generations, and all sorts of things about your family tree that might end up surprising you. Clearly the people who subscribe to such services would like to know the truth about themselves and where their genes came from.
Yet when it comes to other things, we might not be so eager to know the truth about ourselves. I’m thinking in particular about our attitudes about race, gender and other groups of people that society likes to lump together.
As I watch the various responses to the tragedies in Ferguson and on Staten Island, I think that one of the tricky aspects of trying to discuss all of this is that most people don’t realize that they themselves harbor prejudices. Almost anybody you talk to will assure you that they themselves are not prejudice. Yet they are perfectly comfortable with the thought that a very large number of other people are indeed prejudiced.
Suppose we had the equivalent of genetic testing, but one that gives you a map of your prejudices, racial or otherwise, that you yourself never knew you were harboring.
I would argue that a conversation in the U.S. about race could only be helped by such self-knowledge. After all, there is no shame in harboring prejudices. All of us have irrational emotional responses to things, and many of those responses stem from times in our early childhood when we had no control over whatever nutty ideas our all-powerful parents may have been feeding us.
The real question is what you actually do and say, how you treat and speak about others, whatever your inner demons may be. It can only help to learn about prejudices in your own soul that you never knew you had. To speak truly about anything, you must first know the truth about yourself.
You say, “there is no shame in harboring prejudices.” I think that we should be ashamed of our prejudices. If you know you hold a prejudice, would you ever want to voice it? I don’t think I would, I’d be ashamed to let people know that’s how I think.
When would it be appropriate for me to say, “I don’t feel comfortable around gay people because they’re gay”? The only way I can see that sentence sitting well with people who don’t share the same view is if it’s followed with a “/however/, I support their rights,” or something like that. Like saying, “This is a bad thing about me, /however/ I make up for it with this good thing.”
I think because our prejudices are bad things about us, we don’t bring them up because they’re inherently not helpful. If I were to say, “Atheists just hate religious people, no matter how much love the faithful show them,” How would that be at all useful for anyone to hear in a controversial religious rights debate? I could turn around and say, “Oh, but that statement’s rooted in my deep-seeded prejudices from childhood,” but then, is it possible to hold a prejudice and also know exactly where it comes from? Even if that were the case, what could be constructive about sharing a prejudice, then dismissing it by explaining where it comes from?
Another thing is, knowing you have a prejudice doesn’t mean you think it’s wrong. To draw from real life this time, I don’t think animals count as people. I think some of them can suffer, and if there isn’t a reason for it, the suffering should be avoided; but if the reason for their suffering is “this is a more efficient and cheaper way to get the animal to your plate,” then I’m all for it. Before learning of the existence of Veganism, I never would have had reason to challenge these beliefs. If I had gotten a report that somehow objectively told me that I harbored anti-animal prejudices, I don’t think it would have changed the way I approach the topic. That’s certainly a sign of prejudice, but that doesn’t make me feel in the wrong, even though I’ve been “made aware” of this prejudice.
At the beginning of this post, I didn’t distinguish between right and wrong prejudice, but looking back on my first two examples, I obviously chose them because I think they are wrong. How could I say “this prejudice I harbor is bad” if I think the prejudice is right? And how can I say “voicing this prejudice isn’t helpful” if I think the prejudice is the truth? I think wrong prejudices are certainly something to be ashamed of; they’re ugly, hurtful, unhelpful, and have no reason to be voiced. But I don’t know that people who harbor those prejudices will stop harboring them just because they found out they’re there, ’cause they won’t think the prejudices are wrong.
CC, sorry I wasn’t more clear. I was referring to the prejudices that we don’t realize we have — the ones that are at odds with our professed rational opinions.
Someone can sincerely believe himself to be supportive of gay rights, and yet unconsciously make a decision not to hire a gay person — even if that person is best for the job — because he holds a prejudice that he himself is not aware of.
If he had some way to see that he holds this unconscious prejudice, that knowledge could only benefit his ability to make decisions. For example, he might end up hiring more qualified employees. Not only would his fellow citizens not be treated unfairly, but his own business would benefit as well.
There’s this type of test that does unveil hidden prejudices by looking at your associations. It’s actually pretty scary when you realize mid-test that your instinct is to sort a word in a direction that goes counter to what you claim to believe in wholeheartedly.
http://www.understandingprejudice.org/iat/index2.htm