Unconscious Prejudice And The Poison Of Labels

When I was a younger man, in my very early twenties, a female friend of mine asked if I would smoke and talk with her while she waited for her date to pick her up. So we stood outside of the barracks and waited for him to arrive. When he pulled up and got out of the car, I immediately thought to myself "She could do better."

Why? Maybe a little bit of jealousy.

But, really, it was because he was black. She was white.

Now up until that moment I had never thought of myself as racist, or prejudiced. But that feeling of discomfort made me question my views.

How had I internalized a racist attitude? Was it through the media? Through upbringing? Through my own ignorance?

The answer is probably a little bit of all of those things.

Somehow, over the course of my life, I had come to attach a set of feelings and beliefs about black men in particular that were poisonous. Somehow, I had come to believe that black men were in some way less worthy of my respect.

This disturbed me to no end. I resolved to change my beliefs.

In movies and books when people come to this realization, there is an overnight change. That, to me, is not realistic. I can tell you that I did not wake up the next day with twenty odd years of internalized prejudice washed away.

It took active effort. Which is a ridiculous notion. I actively had to come to believe that another human being was not less worthy of my respect simply because they were another skin color. Admitting that is embarrassing.

How many other places in our lives do we do this labeling though? How much poison have we come to attach to certain characteristics? How do you feel when I say the words fat? White? Gay? Male? Muslim? Christian? Mexican? Immigrant? Poor? Privileged? Conservative? Liberal? Obama? Trump?

The more we label and define human beings as belonging to certain groups, the more easily we think of them as other than human. We resort back to being tribal, where only members of the tribe are worthy of our attention. 

This is not a plea for moral relativism, mind you. Civility seems to be a lost art in this world, but it is perfectly acceptable to disagree with someone on major issues and still be kind to them.

Kindness is necessary, even. Because the more we attach our own poisonous feelings to other people, the more we pollute our own minds.