So, I actually took the time to look up the dictionary definition of the word bigot:
“A person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.”
Based on context, I always assumed it was somebody that held prejudices against certain groups of people.
Yeah, it can be, but it can also just be people that are intolerant of those holding different opinions. In which case, who ISN’T a bigot nowadays? I see this in spades all over the internet on every side of the political spectrum.
Less “in real life” because people are less likely to give strong opinions there, especially even remotely controversial ones, like religion, politics, etc. But on the internet, when people can show their “true selves”? Oh yeah.
Any chance you have a link to the dictionary source you mentioned? You know, there might have been something more there. In any case, if you want to draw all encompasing conclusions from a single line of text, be my guest.
What’s the debate? Are you saying that the definition is incorrect, or that bigotry is OK because everyone does it, or that disagreement is the same as intolerance, or something else?
Most people are not intolerant of those with differing opinions. Indeed you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who shares exactly all the same opinions as you do and I doubt you are intolerant of everyone.
I think the word is more aptly applied to those who hold unreasonable ideas and are immune to evidence to the contrary and believe everyone else is wrong (rather than allowing that reasonable people can view the same thing differently sometimes).
I don’t think it’s incorrect, I don’t think it’s okay (I think the level of discourse these days is terrible), and I don’t think disagreement is the same as intolerance. I think, by the base definition, that, at least on the internet, more people are bigots than not. Even here on a moderated forum things get out of hand rather frequently.
The mind can be a bit like a house of cards, and people often stake a great deal on not having to move their cards - especially ones that they’ve placed early on in the process.
It is my belief that the vast majority of people are completely tolerant of those that disagree with them. I live in Baltimore, a mid-sized city, and we have our share of violent disagreements, but few are due to bigotry, most are due to poverty and an unregulated drug market. My wife and I have been together for over 20 years, and we don’t even share a religion, we do however tolerate eachother’s religious beliefs. We have a son that is a vegetarian, like his mom, but unlike his dad. We have friends with cultures, religious beliefs, and political views that we do not share. We are not some exceptional family, and our tolerance should not be praised as if it were a struggle to achieve. People on the internet often lack manners, bigots too often lack manners, but that doesn’t make the vast majority of people or people on the internet bigots, it just means that people, divorced from the customs of face to face interaction, are rude sometimes.
First of all, I disagree that most people are intolerant towards those holding different opinions. If I think peanut butter is delicious and someone I work with says that peanut butter is repellent, I’m not going to stop tolerating that person.
More importantly, that’s a dumb-ass definition. Here’s the fully definition from M-W:
a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
Notice obstinate, prejudice, racial, ethnic group, and hatred in that definition? Do you want to debate whether people are bigoted under the definition you quoted (I disagree with you, but not that strenuously) or whether most people are bigoted under the broader, more correct (IMO) definition? I disagree more strenuously, but I would like to know which one you mean.
I feel that that definition is incomplete/incorrect. I feel it should more properly be:
“Person who is intolerant toward a class or group of people.”
I think the class/group aspect is integral to the definition; if you dislike a person it’s not bigotry; you have to have a whole type of person you dislike, which dislike is then transferred to any and all people of that type you encounter, hear about, or imagine. I also don’t feel that being a member of the group excludes the possibility of being bigoted against that group.
I’m also not sure one way or the other that bigotry has to be based on ignorance - I think that it’s still bigotry if you hate the group based on generic data even if it’s based on factual trends which may or may not be true for each individual in the group.
I disagree with your main point here. Racism is racism, and bigotry is bigotry. There can definitely be a non-bigoted racist - that’s the person who changes his mind and becomes less racist when he meets people who belong to the group he had the problem about.
And a person can be bigoted regarding anything for which evidence exists, such as scientific discoveries or history or … anything.
I’ve always felt that racism is a more specific form of bigotry - it’s bigotry about race. (As opposed to, say, bigotry about gender, sexuality, religion, operating system preference…) The idea of an unbigoted racist is oxymoronic to me - a racist who is becoming less racist is simply a bigot who is becoming less bigoted (regarding race).
There might be a term for a person who is resistant to persuasion by facts and experience, but in my opinion (and by the definition in the OP) that term isn’t “bigot”.
I disagree - you cannot be bigoted against abortion. You can be bigoted against people who approve of abortion, but your dislike of the procedure itself would require a different term, in my opinion (and the OP’s definition).
I’ve noticed in many threads that people generally misunderstand dictionaries.
Definitions are pithy summaries of the way words have been used in the past. The use of the plural is critical. Most words - indeed, all words except for specialized jargon - have multiple usages and therefore shadings of meaning. Dictionaries have to decide how many of those meanings it defines, based on lots of things including how recent the change has been, how likely the reader is to encounter it, and how distinctly different it is from current definitions. The largest unabridged dictionaries will have the largest number of definitions per word; college dictionaries will cut the least necessary. Google has to decide which single generalized definition will meet most people’s needs, just enough so they go, “ah, got it.” Whatever else that may be it is the dictionary definition of not being “the dictionary definition of the word bigot.”
I really enjoyed Kory Stamper’s Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. She’s an editor at Merriam-Webster and does a language blog. Her book walks us through her career as a lexicographer and how she learned how to write definitions, a long, painful process. It doesn’t happen the way most people think it does.
You two doors, one for prejudiced, the other for unprejudiced.
[sub]The one for unprejudiced does not open[/sub]
Their point is that we all have prejudices. Some are not obvious, even to ourselves. Even if we are intelligent and enlightened enough not to let them guide how we act…they are still there.
And that is OK…if we do not let them guide how we act.
Ah, yes. That one. I think it’s a bad definition. The job of a dictionary is to describe a word as it is actually used. I don’t think this one measures up. I see the word “bigot” used a lot, and I’ve never encountered it to mean that, other than by people citing that Google definition.
By their definition, I’m a bigot for not tolerating child molesters. They tend to think they should be allowed to molest children. I’m a bigot for not tolerating a psychopath who thinks everyone should do what he says at all times. I’m a bigot for not tolerating an asshole who doesn’t care about other people.
I recently encountered an author who, on the fan forum for his work, was deriding a reader who was being particularly vocal in his dislike of a particular character. I would characterize his post as being intolerant of other ideas about his work. But calling him a “bigot” would not fit. Calling what he did bigotry would be absurd.
I’m not saying I can come up with a better definition, but the Google definition is clearly off. At the very least, the intolerance needs to be restricted to others deeply held beliefs that are part of their identity, or, more commonly, to certain inherent characteristics of a person.