Were they intelligent, from what you knew of them(I don’t mean actual IQ or anything)? What were they like, in terms of personality? How extreme were their beliefs?
I’m mainly wondering because all that I have ever seen of them, from message boards and documentaries, seem to indicate they aren’t very bright or intellectual.
The problem is that the same human mind that can ferverantly believe one god is better than another, or one nation is better than another can easily believe one race is better than another. Smart doesn’t have a lot to do with it; there are plenty of smart religious people and smart patriotic people.
It’s not that long ago that racist beliefs were much more widely accepted. I can think of a couple people in my life from 2 generations before me that were pretty racist, that were pretty smart in general. Times change, in this case for the better.
My cousin is ridiculously prejudiced against gays and non-Christians. By non-Christians, I don’t mean people who aren’t her particular leaning/denomination, she’s very loosey-goosey about it. She doesn’t require church attendance or really anything more than a nominal Christianity to be okay with her, you just can’t actively practice something else.
I didn’t know this until she was in the car with me and while sitting at a red light, a gay couple and then a Muslim woman in full niqaab crossed the street in front of us. She went off on a tirade about both. I was inclined to tell her to get the hell out of my car.
Is she stupid? She’s got an MBA from an Ivy League university. She runs her own company with 48 employees and takes home nearly seven figures every year. She’s extremely successful, has been honored by any number of organizations, is a volunteer for a couple of different groups and by all measures is a great person except for the raging and inexplicable bigotry. :eek:
Yes, several. One owned his own company and was highly fiscally intelligent. He employed people from South Asia who he despised. He was also something of a crook.
Also, I used to room with a racist. He wasn’t stupid, and had quite a good job with a bank. He was, however, very ignorant, and had had something of an insular upbrining (rural Ireland). He was also opinionated and arrogant, and was a moral absolutist.
Thus, he had a total lack of empathy: e.g. he said “you’ll love Washington DC, it’s full of Irish pubs”. Later, he said “the problem with the Pakis [sic] in Ireland is they stick together - they don’t integrate”. I pointed out the ironic contrast between his two statements, and he said “but that’s different”. I asked him why, but he didn’t have an explanation.
He was a practising Catholic, and the doctrine of Catholic morals and behavioural standards to which he felt everyone should conform was - surprise surprise - exactly the one in which he had been brought up.
When my wife and I were dating, she kept bragging about her brother’s intelligence. She said he was the smartest man she had ever met (until me).
The first time I met him, he told a racist joke, and in front of my daughter. Later that day I found out he was homophobic. I’ve personally never considered him an intelligent person.
The most racist woman I have ever met was not at all intelligent, and was pretty trashy herself, IMHO. (8 kids by 3 or 4 different fathers, chainsmoking, wore clothes wayyyyyyytoo tight and too young-seeming for her age, etc) (Am I being predjudiced by writing that??)
She was always referring to middle eastern people as “towelheads” and to her, one middle eastern country/belief system was indistinguishable from the next. I initially wondered if this was a reaction (albeit a bigoted one) to 9/11, but she soon also spoke of “spics” and “niggers” and “kikes”, so I figure she was an equal-oppurtunity racist. I’m sure gay people weren’t high on her list, either.
A guy I know works in Russia and is married to a Russian lady, they have three children. His brother works in Japan and is married to an American lady, they live in Japan and have one child.
Their mother is a highly intelligent, well educated barrister who earns ferocious amount of money and “does a lot for charity”
She was incensed when the maitre d’ in a swish lunchtime resaturant asked her if she would mind sharing her table with another lady, as there were no other free tables. She said that of course she didn’t mind. When the lady arrived, she was a black English lady.
Now, whether my friend’s mother was incensed because the lady was black or because the lady was English, we never found out, but this episode was apparently typical of “Those people coming over here and taking jobs that should go to Irish people and something should be done about it.”
When I said that mothers in Russia and Japan might very well be saying the same about her two sons, she looked at me as if it was me that was the raving loony.
Just a word of caution here. If you check here under the term “bigot” you’ll see:
Main Entry: big·ot
Pronunciation: 'bi-g&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, hypocrite, bigot
Date: 1661
: a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices
And under “racist” there’s:
Main Entry: rac·ism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
Function: noun
Date: 1936
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
==============
The caution relates to the idea that one can be “bigoted” against “bigots” by attempting to ascribe to individuals the traits one assumes to apply to a group. Mental laziness, in other words.
In the early 1970s, I had lunch at my grandmother’s house, and her brother and his wife were there. She (his second wife; they met in the graveyard, where they were both visiting their late spouses) was something else, holding forth about her visit to the motor vehicle department, with this rude “coon” behind the counter, going on and on and on about black people (although she didn’t use that term) in general, until my great-uncle finally had to tell her “That’s enough, Charlotte”.
To my sister and myself, teenagers who had gone to a progressive private schools and hung out with a fairly up-to-date crowd, this was a view into a past that we had never known. Quite an eye-opener!
Had a hardcore bigot in one of my classes in college. You may or may not have heard of Matt Hale? He was intelligent, I’ll give him that. But he was also a jerk, and not just about racial issues.
I have heard of him. Isn’t he also actively crazy? Not crazy enough to keep him out of jail, but still, y’know… cuckoo… cuckoo…
I have a great uncle with a doctorate who says lots of nasty things about black people. He also has a high opinion of Mussolini. Whaddya gonna do?
When you ride Harleys, you occasionally run into the 1%-ers who unfortunately color the preconceptions people have of bikers. Well, I’ve had a couple in my yard. Complete with swastikas and white power t-shirts. It’s disgusting. I am amazed at how good people are at hiding it…then all of a sudden, they drop the bombshell.
I’ve had a lot of experience with general racism and bigotry (I was raised Jewish, I’m bi, I’m in my school’s GSA, and I’m dating a black guy - I think I’m kind of asking for it), but I try to think that most of it isn’t true bigotry, but just knee-jerk reactions to an unfamiliar thing.
However, this one incident stands out in my mind - girl described in that OP was (well, still is) jaw-droppingly bigoted.
My life-long friend is racist. It has been very tough dealing the seeming dichotomy of a man who has done so much for me and my family, been supportive to me in my dark times, stood by me when I’ve been clearly stupid and wrong, and this guy who just says the most filthy stuff about black people.
The weird thing is, he’s married to a Korean woman (he’s white), and he gets so angry when the people in his community (he lives in South Carolina) yell racist things at his wife. He will then turn around and complain about the stupid “negroes.”
And man, you don’t want to bring up Kwanzaa around him. He won’t shut up about Kwanzaa. He will start complaining about it in the middle of July. And Kweisi Mfume, the head of the NAACP. He resents that he changed his name to an African name.
And he knows how I feel about what he says. I know he moderates his speech around me, and I still get loads of it. I’m scared to think of what he says around people who agree with him.
It would be so much easier if he didn’t have a fundamentally decent heart. He’s just ignorant. I’ve tried to place him in the “just plain bad” category of people, but he’ll turn around and do something wildly nice and decent.
My grandfather is a homophobe and somewhat of a racist. He’s a very kind and intelligent man, but his opinions of other races and sexual orientations are somewhat negative. I’m not sure what his problem with gays is exactly, but I think he’s prejudiced against blacks because he had a lot of bad experiences in Detroit during the 60s and 70s. He’s getting better as he ages though, and my ever-tolerant grandmother keeps him in line. 
my Grandparents and uncles are all quite racist. IMHO, it’s a product of ignorance and upbringing. It didn’t used to bother me so much, but it makes me very uncomforatble now.
Most of my relatives are (from my parents’s generation on back).
My father, in the privacy of his own home, calls blacks “spades.” (Gee, thanks for saving that all up for us, Dad.) I’m stunned, because he’s so incredibly liberal, enlightened, and intelligent about pretty much everything else.
My mother is, kind of. She knows it’s wrong, and is embarrassed by it, but occasionally it just kind of pops into her mind when she’s annoyed at someone who isn’t white. She never says it to anyone’s face, and she’s deeply chagrined by it, but she admits to us that racist thoughts occur to her. I think this is a result of having grown up in a Maryland backwater at a time when schools were still segregated and the black people she knew either cleaned house for the white folks or worked at the Black & Decker plant. Mom’s a college professor and, like Dad, is very smart, liberal, and open-minded about nearly everything else.
Mom’s brother Earl is a real Alabama redneck. He’ll go on and on about how lazy black people are to this day. He once told me, “If you ever bring home a black boyfriend, I’m gonna be mad.” His wife, my Aunt Joanne, quickly jumped in with, “As if she cares what you think, Earl.” (I love Aunt Joanne. ) Uncle Earl is like a lot of guys of his generation–bigoted and hard-headed, but also a likeable and quite bright man in other respects.
Dad’s brother Paul believes Swedes are God’s chosen people. He hates black people with a passion but claims to love the Vietnamese and Hmong immigrants he works with because they have such a good work ethic. He actually tells them, “I like Asians–don’t worry, I’m not prejudiced against you. It’s just the n----rs I can’t stand.” :rolleyes: He is a certifiable doofus in all areas of his life.
Oh, and he’s got something against Italians, too. I don’t know what he said to my Dad’s sister Alice, but she isn’t speaking to him ever again. Alice married an Italian-American man and had two kids with him. Alice’s son married an Italian-American woman who’s family still speaks Italian. My relatives all find this amusing and bizarre.
Dad’s brother John married a Lebanese woman. Everyone on that side of the family thinks their culture is odd, that her family is odd and rude and rather annoying, and that this is due to their being “Ay-rabs.” They resent the time my cousins spend with their mother’s family. (My aunt is definitely annoying, but it’s not a cultural thing.)
The live-in nurse who takes care of my grandparents is a Polish immigrant. All the relatives on Dad’s side of the family called her “the Polish lady” when they talked about her–not by her name. I finally yelled at my parents, “What is this woman’s name? Doesn’t she have a name? Why can’t we call her by her goddamned name? Do you realize how awful you sound?” My mother was embarrassed to realize what they’d been doing. Dad’s side of the family found nothing wrong with it. They started calling her “Irene”, though, once they got to know her and realized she is a great person. :rolleyes: (I am fairly sure her real name is Irina, but that would be too ethnic for my grandparents.)
Everyone on Dad’s side of the family is pretty uneducated and ignorant.
Being at family gatherings often makes me feel queasy.
My brother-in-law is a virulent bigot and racist. He also has a degree in history and taught school for many years. I have never, in 45 years, been at a gathering where he has not gone out of his way to talk derogatorily about persons of color. He basically hates everyone who isn’t him and has been an abusive husband and father in the past. The sad part is that my sister is somewhat infected by this bile, and his children hate him (not for the racism, but for the emotional abuse over the years). The guy is a world-class asshole.
I’d never met a bigot or racist until I got married. My father-in-law is both. I have heard him make terrible pronouncements against black people. On the other hand, he is a decent, generous and otherwise very nice guy. He just has some pitiable opinions and is unafraid to expound on them. To his credit, he has the decency to refrain from making racist statements while I’m there, because he knows it offends me, and my wife as well.
Last Christmas, we were at my mother-in-law’s parents’ house, and her father was going on about black people, in front of nieces and nephews and grandchildren. Then later one of the uncles made some abysmal comments about gays. And people laughed. I wanted to take my wife and leave, but we were with the rest of her family, so I had to wait it out. It won’t bother me if we never visit there again.
I’m sorry, I don’t want to monopolize this thread, but it got me thinking about it, and I was wrong. I did encounter a kind of racism once before, a long time ago.
I had occasion to be staying at the home of some African-Americans in Rochester, New York. The lady had two small children, like 4 and 5. One day, they played this game in which they would run up to me, and sniff loudly, then make faces and run away laughing, and repeat. I didn’t know what the heck they were on about until I learned that it is one of those dumb things that some blacks say about whites - that we smell like chicken. And the kids thought that was hilarious.
I thought this was pretty young for ideas like those about other people to be already in their minds. I guess it’s just another example of ignorance that you can’t fight.