Ruminations on bigotry

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.

  1. 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.)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. **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.

  4. **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?

Without taking any positions yet on the remaining points, I disagree with (1).

Even some bigots might say, and believe, that their objections arise from a belief that people should “keep to their own.” That is, their bigoted actions and beliefs are not grounded in a sense of inferiority towards the class but rather in a sense that close association is undesirable.

One man of my personal acquaintance is openly bigoted against Jews, and explained to me once that the Jews are better than the rest of us, and they know it, and this fueled his dislike. He explained that we all secretly hate the overachiever, and he was simply honest about it.

Your attempt to shoehorn the word into your personal definition is misplaced.

Huh. Even based on your description, I’m not sure it contradicts what I said: if you hate someone, you’ve got a reason for it. There’s definitely an anti-elitist strain of thought out there, and it sounds like he considers elites (i.e., Jews) to be inferior to regular folk like himself. In my experience, folks that hate overachievers always explain it by ascribing character flaws to the overachievement.

Actually, it appears the word “bigotry” originally referred to any narrow-minded stubbornness.

  • Ambrose Bierce

:smiley: Ah, Ambrose.

Seriously, though, while I think this speaks to the word’s original meaning well, it’s significant that the quote you’re offering is about a century old. In my informal survey of SDMB and the first few pages of Google hits, a tiny percentage of uses of the word or its variants aren’t directly related to an unwarranted belief in the inferiority of another class of people.

You have been corrected on this point several times, including by two mods.

This is the genetic fallacy. The biggest fool in the world can tell you the sun is shining, and that doesn’t make it dark. You do not refute an argument by labelling it.

If someone suggests an argument that is based on any kind of evidence, you refute the argument by addressing the evidence. IOW you show that the evidence is invalid, and thus the argument is wrong, or at least unproven.

“Group X is subject to Bad Thing Y.”

“That’s a bigoted statement.” End of discussion.

Regards,
Shodan

:shrugs:

He says A, you say “it sounds like he thinks not-A”.

You can’t convince someone who isn’t listening.

Regards,
Shodan

That is very interesting–but alas, does nothing to address my points. Perhaps you meant to post it in a different thread?

I encourage you to reread point 6, which addresses exactly the sort of inappropriate use of the word that you describe. As for the genetic fallacy, reread point 3.

Heh. This is an excellent point, and well-taken; I’ll stop trying to do so.

But he provides an example:

Well? Makes sense, doesn’t it?

It sounds like you don’t think it makes sense. That confirms what I said, which is appropriate.

Regards,
Shodan

I think you do yourself a disservice by taking such views at face value. Segregationists - to use a slightly more numerous example than the guy you know - will often tell you they don’t think other races are "worse’ than whites. They just think the races should keep to themselves. Now, if the objection is to a dilution of culture, then there might be something in that position. But it clearly isn’t. It’s an objection to miscegenation. You think your friend would object to improving his stock (and presumably, the outlook for his descendants) by intermixing with the “superior” Jews? Surely not - but I’ll bet he wouldn’t let his daughter marry a Jew.

As I wrote in the other thread, I think your argument fails at #1. While common use of words over time can dilute or change the original or previous meanings, I’m not seeing that the case here. For you, a bigoted argument is by definition wrong or unsound. That is only because you have defined it as such.

I don’t think you’ve demonstrated how you overcome the accepted definition of the word. Maybe a poll?

Of course, I still use the word “decimated” incorrectly but I consider that a personal failing. :slight_smile:

I disagree. I the 1920s, say, the unwashed might have been bigoted against Jews because they thought we were Christ-killers, but high grade universities kept Jews out, and I doubt the people who ran them were so crude. It was much more excluding those who did well on the tests they defined in order to let in more of their type.
My town is quite diverse, but some old-time white residents are resentful about newer residents bidding up housing prices. They don’t say anything about bad habits or traits. I’m not sure the accusation of working too long hours or studying too much counts as inferiority.

Could bigotry just be negative feelings about a group as a group?

:confused: Then, would you define “bigotry” in such a way that there can be such thing as a bigoted argument that is right and sound? What would be that definition?

I’m not sure a poll would be useful. This is the Straight Dope, a bunch of ornery pedants, who would look at the poll, figure out the answer I was hoping I’d get, and give me the dictionary answer out of spite. :slight_smile:

Rather, I think a survey of the actual usage of the word is more useful. In the other thread I offered a good half-dozen or so links to the word’s usage; I got these examples by weeding through the first page of hits when I searched SDMB and not counting posts from the ATMB thread I started. Other than skipping ones from that thread, I don’t think I skipped any. As I wrote in that other thread, overwhelmingly the word is used around here to talk about the sort of beliefs I describe in point 1 above.

As for Google, that’s a little trickier: Google a single word, and you’re going to get discussions of that word, focusing on definitions. And it’s true that most dictionary definitions match the one I disagree with. But if you add some other words – Google, say, “Examples of bigotry,” or “Bigots in history” or “Famous bigotry”–and it’s right back to using the word to describe thinking another class of people is inferior, whether the website’s talking about Nation of Islam or David Duke or Fred Phelps or whatever.

If others can find a way to systematically examine the word’s usage (maybe there’s a way through Google books or something), I’d be interested to see that. Show me a way to examine actual usage of the word that shows that it’s not generally used to refer to an unwarranted belief in the inferiority of another group. If your examination is systematic (that is, not cherry-picked), and if it’s really being used just to mean intolerance of other beliefs the majority of the time, I’ll concede a big chunk, if not the entirety, of my claim.

I’m really trying to be a descriptivist here. As I said above,

I think that the “unwarranted” part is, for how folks use the word, a necessary part of the definition. I’ve never seen the word “bigot” or its variants used when the speaker considers the target’s beliefs to be warranted. It’s analogous in this respect to the word “superstitious”: by definition, a superstitious belief cannot be correct. Nobody describes the supernatural beliefs they think are true as superstitious–the most they’ll do is to laughingly refer to their own behavior as such, indicating that even though rationally they know the belief is false, they still do it anyway.

I’m not convinced it’s possible to have negative feelings about a group without thinking that the group is in some way inferior to yours–whether you think they’re dumber, more arrogant, less moral, or simply less deserving than your own group. In any case, though, that gets into mind-reading, which I maintain doesn’t have a place in great debates. In this forum, someone’s feelings are not especially relevant: what’s relevant is the quality of the argument they raise. If their argument depends on feelings, it falls apart; and if it depends on unwarranted assumptions of inferiority of a class of people, it falls apart. Good grief, that’s exhausting to type. Let’s just say that if it depends on bigotry it falls apart.

Edited to add: Bone, Voyager, Bricker, may I just say that I appreciate the spirit in which you’re arguing with me? I certainly didn’t expect everyone to agree with me, but I also was prepared for the disagreement to be a lot snarkier and content-free; it’s a pleasure to have folks raise substantial and civil challenges to what I say :).

Hitler, I have read, admired the Jews as “negative supermen” – congenitally evil, but supremely capable. That’s still bigotry, of course. (And pretty much indispensable, if the Nazi movement was going to blame Jews for all of Europe’s problems; wouldn’t be plausible if Jews are stupid – to account for any problems, a stupid group of people would have to be much, much more numerous than the Jews were, numerous enough to swing elections, burden the welfare rolls, etc.)

“Bigotry” is a conclusion concerning the motives of the person for making the argument. However, the argument itself may be sound - either on its own merits, or because it is motivated by something other than bigotry.

For example - someone may argue in favour of limiting immigration. Their reasons may well be bigotry (that is, they may want to limit immigration because they don’t want dirty foreigners around); they may point to a bunch of alleged social benefits for limiting immigration (more jobs, less strain on social services, or whatever). Those benefits (and, naturally, drawbacks) remain true whether they, personally, are bigots or not.

So pointing out that their argument is a “bigoted” one isn’t advancing the debate. Even if it is true, it does not eliminate the persuasiveness of the alleged benefits they are claiming. If it isn’t true, and the argument is motivated by something other than bigotry, it simply creates offence.

I believe I addressed this argument in my second numbered point in the OP.

There is no real difference in this analysis between claiming a person is “bigoted” and claiming that the underpinnings of the idea that person is proposing is “bigoted”.

In either case, it is an example of the so-called “genetic fallacy”: if the source of the idea (or its “underpinnings”) lies in bigotry, the idea is discredited. This is an informal fallacy in argument - the idea may be wrong or it may be right; the fact that its “underpinnings” are bigotry (or alternatively, that it was motivated by bigotry) are irrelevant.

As I noted in point 1, and repeated later, I believe that “unwarranted” is a necessary component of the idea of bigotry. As I noted in point 3, an argument is bigoted only if the bigotry is necessary to the argument. As such, it’s incorrect to suggest that the genetic fallacy is in play here. A bigot may make an entirely valid argument, if the argument can be supported without resorting to bigoted underpinnings.