Some of y’all may be aware of a minor kerfuffle involving a malcontent over in ATMB who’s got a bug up his butt about bigotry. That thread got closed, but a suggestion was made that a thread about bigotry might be better suited to Great Debates. So I’m going to put some thoughts here.
- Bigotry generally refers to an unwarranted belief in the inferiority of a class of people. This is the hardest sell among my ideas, I think, because it flies in the face of dictionary definitions, which generally cite intolerance toward other folks’ opinions. But I’ve done some informal searching both here on the Straight Dope and through Google, and over and over, when folks use the term “bigotry” or “bigoted,” they use it in the more specific meaning that I offer. Bigotry is used to refer to Saudi rules that require women to cover their heads (based on a belief that women are second-class citizens), to the idea Muslims are terrible people, to laws that prevent gay people from getting married, to scurrilous tales about Jews. It’s almost never used to refer to other sorts of obstinacy or intolerance, such as a belief that your sports team is the best, or denying climate change, or banning books from libraries.
I don’t know whether this is a recent phenomenon: in the past, was “bigotry” used in the more general sense, such that those who denied that smoking caused cancer were accused of bigotry back in the seventies? Whether it’s a recent change, or whether dictionaries are all cribbing off each other, it seems clear to me that the dictionary definition of bigotry is less accurate in describing how the word is actually used than the definition I’ve offered, that bigotry refers to an unwarranted belief that a class of people is inferior. (The word “unwarranted” is in there because folks don’t generally call you bigoted if you condemn rapists, for example: if folks think your belief in the inferiority of the class of people is warranted, that’s not what “bigotry” means.)
-
If you call a person bigoted, that means you think they ascribe to bigotry in some form. But if you call an idea bigoted, it refers to either to the explicit argument or to its underpinnings, since ideas are incapable of believing things.
-
One legitimate avenue of “attack” in a debate–that is, one legitimate way to argue that someone’s beliefs or claims are incorrect–is to suggest that they are bigoted. Such a suggestion means either that the beliefs themselves represent an unwarranted assumption of the inferiority of a class of people, or that without such an assumption, the argument has no support (that is, that such an assumption is necessary to the argument).
Imagine a poster who proposes that gay people have access to civil unions, and that straight people can get married, but that both institutions are entirely equal and not separate. Purely hypothetical. A person who disagrees with this proposal might suggest that the argument is bigoted–that without an assumption that gay people are inferior, there’s no logical reason to put forth such a proposal.
-
A charge of bigotry, or of making a bigoted argument, can easily be countered. Simply show that an assumption of the inferiority of a class of people is not a necessary part of the argument. At that point, if someone insists on saying, “Yes, but I think YOU are making such an assumption, even though the argument is perfectly fine without it,” they’re engaging in mind-reading exercises, and they’re a stupid butthole whom you can safely ignore. They’ve lost the argument. If, however, they dispute your claim that your proposal makes sense without the assumption, that’s fair cricket.
-
Although there is emotional weight attached to the term “bigoted,” the word has legitimate use in a debate and is not well-poisoning. If you’ve made it this far without countering points 1-4, then you’ll see that the word has a specific meaning with relevance to many debates. The fact that someone doesn’t like the term is immaterial: if it does not apply to them, they have a way to counter it.
-
**The term can absolutely be used inappropriately: you can call someone bigoted, or you can call arguments bigoted without clear reasons for making the charge. **If you do the former, that’s gonna run up against the rules of GD. If you do the latter, you’re making a terrible argument and people should point and laugh. But the fact that it can be used inappropriately does not mean it is always used inappropriately.
-
**Finally, the fact that there are other ways of expressing this idea of bigotry and of accusing arguments of the flaw of being bigoted, that’s beside the point: **there are always multiple ways of saying the same thing, especially if you’re willing to engage in circumlocution. The word “bigoted” appears to be clearly understood to have the meaning I suggest in point 1 (despite the dictionary’s definition, I’ve never seen anyone confused about what the word means), and there’s no reason to use less clear language.
Them’s my thoughts. Yours?