I always hear that prejudice is caused by lack of understanding about the minority culture in question. I not believe that to be true in all cases. I grew up in the rural South in a town that is roughly half black and half white. My parents both taught in an all black school and I always understood and supported most of black culture there except for the gang-bangers. The person that largely raised me was an old black woman who I would gladly die for.
Fast forward ten years. I live in Boston with my wife and child. I have never lived with the types of groups of people that dominate here and had no opinion of them. I have learned to absolutely despise one of the two white ethnic immigrant groups that dominate Boston. This prejudice was developed on from many varied experiences from that group. I have traveled all over Europe and the only place where I have been treated aggressively and sometimes physically rudely were people from this country. I got back from France last week (it is not the French that I am talking about. I love them) and my family and I had to fly into this country to make a connecting flight. We were traveling with our two year old daughter and it was one incompetent mistake after another to the point of absurdity. I had to physically confront two men over fifty for cutting in line and hitting my daughter in the head with their suitcase. That is only a sample. The direct unprovoked and unjustified problems have been in the hundreds and sometimes quite severe.
The kicker is that my wife and her family are from this ethnic group. My wife is half and my daughter one quarter. I had to tell her what I thought of it and of course, it caused a big fight. However, my wife even sees what is wrong with it due our experiences and she acknowledges them.
I judge everyone on an individual basis and I absolutely adore many people in this group. Is it wrong to hate a general culture while loving individual people within the group based on knowledge?
Of course it is, “prejudice” means to judge someone before they have done anything.
The real question is whether it is possible to criticise different ethnic groups for behaviours you have observed without automatically being accused of prejudice.
But what is a general culture? It is rare that any cultural trait is general to an entire country or even an entire region. So I say it is fine to hait a cultural trait (rudeness, sloppyness, pomposity etc.) without in any ways painting an entire country in a bad light.
From your OP you flew from France to USA via a stop-over point. If that point was in England then I appologise for any rudeness you encountered in the airport.
My own personal prejudice comes from the years I spent working in a camera store. This was in a town with a heavy Indian imigrant population. Quite frequently, sometimes several times a day, elderly Indian men would come in to haggle for an expensive camera. They would never buy, they just wanted to see how far they could get you down in price, then they would walk out. So i grew to hate their little visits (we were commissioned), and to this day, I am prejudiced against elderly Indian men.
So, is this based on ignorance? I dunno. Take what you can from my little story.
I think the idea that “prejudice is based on ignorance” is probably a simplistic “after-school special” sentiment. If only we got to know each other, we’d all love one another.
Most prejudice arises from a combination of fear, media stereotypes, and racial tension based on a shared history of domination and periodic flare-ups. And contrary to the “ignorance” sentiment, often prejudice and hate sprout from bad experiences (albiet limited experiences).
But ignornace plays a part as well. If one does not personally know anyone of a certain race, etc., one would be more likely to believe false stereotypes and to fear that group of people. For example, I think much of the current prejudice toward gays in the U.S. is largely a product of ignorance (I’ve actually heard people claim that one of the directives of the “gay agenda” is to recruit more people into the lifestyle).
I worked as a delivery driver for a pizzeria through college in the late 1980s. The delivery area encompassed a middle to upper income area, parts of which were racially integrated.
My average tip was about $1.00 to $1.50; seems low now, but at the time it was considered pretty good. However, my average tip from a delivery to a black household was 10 cents. Maybe one in every ten deliveries to black households resulted in a tip; the rest were stiffs.
I know a member of the offenderati is going to say “You were probably rude to the black customers, because you’re racist!” Nope. I treated EVERYBODY with the same level of courtesy, regardless of their skin color. Even black drivers were largely stiffed by black customers. At the colleges and universities in the delivery area, foreign students from Africa tipped most of the time; African-American students didn’t. (Yes … Nigerians giving me money! :D)
No, I don’t have an aversion to African-Americans based on my experience delivering pizza. Supposedly, blacks don’t tip because food delivery and dining out at table service restaurants is only a relatively recent introduction to their culture, given the rise of the black middle class; there is no collective knowledge of tipping customs among the African-American community. Still, when I see a waitress or waiter in a restaurant serve on black customers, I feel sorry for them, because I think they’re going to get stiffed. If that waitron is also serving me, I feel compelled to tip 30% instead of my usual 17% to 20%, to make up for the stiff they’ll inevitably get.
I think a lot of this stuff is conclusions actually based on knowledge. Different cultures act different ways and if it’s not the way you do things it’s still going to annoy you.
I think I’ve heard that some cultures think it’d rude to give change to people in their hand. If I know this and they do it that way it’s still going to annoy me when thet do it. When I see someone from this group I’m going to be all set to be annoyed expecting them to do this.
Knowledge doesn’t solve this. Getting accostomed to it does. We don’t have much chance to accostom ourselves to other cultural idiosyncrasies so even though we know that others do things differently the differences still annoy us.
Is ths coherent at all?
Elmwood - you got college students to tip you! Wow. That doesn’t jibe with my experience. My prejudice would be that college students were lousy tippers.