At what point does experience overrule prejustice?

Post Reply New Topic

I've got a moral dilemma.

I don't think I'm a racist, maybe I am, but I try to not have any preconceptions about individuals and consider most/all sorts of media to be biased and exaggerating to push a political agenda.

Maybe having autism has always made me feel "different" and therefore maybe in a strange way more connected to people who are "different", in whatever way.
But the only experiences I have had with -certain groups- of people have confirmed the negative stereotypes.

I feel like I'm bullshitting myself and others by trying "politically correct not to be racist" when talking about and approaching those certain groups because my diverse experiences makes it "scientifically proven".

As in, for example (fake), the times I've been around Shetlanderponies (small horse) in my life ended up most times with me getting bit or kicked and I never enjoyed it even when not getting hurt, so -my- approach will be to stay away from them and suggest others do the same even though I clearly see some people are having fun with them. Even when a friend says she has a Shetlandpony that's very tame and won't bite or kick me, I've reached the point where that exception to the rule makes it feels like cheating with a statistical anomaly and not a reason to change my approach/keeping distance from Shetlandponies.

So now what?

Am I a racist? I've got no problem with other kinds of horses, it's just the Shetlanders that have shown over and over to just not working out being around.

Others might say so, but I would not. A local businessman once suggested I stay out of a certain part of town -- the "'hood" -- because he believed I could be in danger there since I do not know how to navigate the kinds of encounters possible there even though I typically have no trouble with people of any race. In another situation, a friend of color has said some of his friends have already judged me to be a redneck and would rather not have me around...and I can understand that without calling them racist for thinking I even might be. Prejudice and racism can be tricky matters to discern while acknowledging one's own lack of knowledge and experience in life.

In America we have "no go regions" where your life may be put in jeopardy if you enter that region, because it is dominated by another race.

Happy-go-lucky beliefs are delusional to the reality that us human chimpanzees fall back to our primitive "law of the jungle" behavior.

One problem with such issues is making generalisations based on relatively few encounters. Over my life I've had friends of every colour and nationality. I get on great with black people, white people, Chinese people, Asian Indians and so on. However, in my youth I had encounters with a few young Pakistani men and a few Welsh people and I took a dislike to them because they were dishonest and basically not very nice people. It would be a huge mistake to generalise and make this a racism/country issue rather than an issue with a few individuals. Some people do though - one bad encounter and they hate an entire race or people of an entire country.

There are about 7 billion people on the planet.

I don't kid myself into thinking my extremely limited encounters are adequate to encompass an entire race of people. I also don't kid myself into thinking I'm a paragon of objective and critical thought; therefore, my perceptions of my interactions could very well be biased and not taking into account all the relevant facts.

There are less "no-go" regions than in the past--definitely.

"prejustice?"

It has more to do with "regions" and less to do with "race." Some regions are bad to go to. Others are safe.

I find it hard to interact with certain ethnical/religious/cultural minorities due to differences that sometimes lie at the basis of interaction.

^ This

I know this, but that's the whole point. It's not just one encounter. It's 20 years of many encounters. Ranging from being robbed 15 years ago on my first ever train ride alone, all the way to hanging out on TeamSpeak in "the depths of the internet" and out of no where being verbally assaulted just because the guy read I was from the Netherlands on my profile a couple years back.

It's not like there's just "a guy" or a group of guys hanging on the corner of my street and they intimidate me every day when I go shopping and I'm basing my idea on their culture solely on these few guys. It's small children with big mouths stealing from the other children, it's teenagers following the stereotype to perfection and having no respect for women while calling me names when they drive on their souped up scooters on the wrong side of the road with no helmet, it's old people spitting at my friend in high school because he's gay.

Especially in High School, 10 years ago, I had the "I need to disprove the stereotype" mentality but time after time even the ones that appeared to be nice at first, once we got close enough for them to start "sharing" their -real- ideas and views on how things should be done comes out.

Even here on WP, the one guy clearly stating he's part of "that group" doesn't break the cycle but enforces it even more with his disrespect for women, talk about paedophilia and general behaviour/disregard for what people tell him.

There comes a time you have to stop treating them as individual "problems", victims of their culture, and accept the culture is the problem to begin with, right?

If you had a machine making tin soldiers, you can't inspect and fix most of them by hand individually, you have to look into the machine to see why so many of them come out "not working properly".


Maybe I'm just really unlucky.. one of those people who merely by the big numbers game, keeps getting encounters with the "bad fish".

What group of people are you talking about?

Dutch here, too. I know exactly what you mean. I never have problems with anyone on the streets yet they keep on harassing, intimidating and threatening to rape me. During summer it's worst and I sometimes felt VERY unsafe. Usually this happens when they're in far larger groups and when I'm by myself/alone, so I avoid such groups. You could call me racist for it but I've had my share with name calling, ethnic slurs and harassment and I'm not going to expose myself purposely to such things just for the sake of 'not being racist'. On the other hand, when I DO encounter them I show no fear and I always say something back. (to which they seem surprised...)

Switching off the mainstream news media permanently, does a lot to subdue the latent racism that can rise to the surface in just about everybody. So much of the media is dedicated to reporting on the negative things that individuals within various minorities get up to as if it somehow reflects on the entire group, and I believe that there is a divide and rule motivation behind a lot of it.

It's not the media, it's experiences. I don't make things up, nor is Autinger, suspectedly. Which is very sad.

You shouldn't have to put up with gang members like that outside your house. I'm not sure what you could do about that, though.

Last edited by Stannis on 04 Jun 2014, 4:00 pm, edited 3 times in total.