Whenever someone is accused of being a bigot, they will often try to defend themselves with the statement “Some of my best friends are black/Jewish/women/etc./etc.” This will always be dismissed with rolled eyes and giggles, and only serve to dig the accused deeper into his/her hole.
I don’t understand why. If, in fact, the accused is telling the truth, why is it not to his/her credit that he/she has good friends that are members of the group he is accused of hating? Granted, it’s not an ironclad defense, but it should help the accused’s case, certainly not hurt it.
I could understand if the “best friends” he/she is describing are bogus (like, “Well, my maid and cook are Hispanic…”); but the accused person never gets that far. With a wave of the hand his/her protestations are dismissed. Why?
I’ll help you out here, Stuyguy cos it’s just not good to talk to yourself so much – maybe it’s a New York thing.
Friends are (pretty much) transient and/or conditional and not always verifiable by third parties. Harsh but fair ?
Personal philosophy/beliefs/value system is/are part of who you are.
Using the former to justify the latter is akin to saying “I’m an American because so are some of my best friends are American”. It might be true but what the hell do your friends have to do with it ?
Whenever someone is accused of being an idiot, believing in such fairy tales as God and Religion, they will often try to defend themselves with the statement “Some of my best friends go to church (or synagogue or mosque)”. This will always be dismissed with rolled eyes and giggles by the realists, and only serve to dig the accused deeper into a Cinderella stories with verses from Bible, Qoran or Tourat.
I don’t understand why. If, in fact, the accused is telling the truth (OK there were a bunch of old story weirdos such as Jesus, or Mohamad or Moses. But what has that fairy tale got to do with today’s or tomorrow’s world), why is it not to his/her credit that he/she has good friends that are members of the the same religious group? Granted, it’s not an ironclad defense, but it should help the accused’s case when confronted with a bunch of realistic and pragmatic atheists or agnostics who live in realities of today and prepare for realities of tomorrow (that require more than prayers).
I could understand if the “best friends” he/she is describing are bogus (like, “Well, Jesus, Mohamad, Moses, Buddah, etc.”); but the accused person never gets that far. With a wave of the hand his/her protestations are dismissed. Why?
I don’t object to a little paraphrasing, One Cell, but could you rephrase what you’re saying? I mean, I’m not getting the analogy … minorities are to bigotry as church attendance is to religion? I don’t think I read that right.
I’ve known plenty of bigots who had friends of the races they were prejudiced against. Their attitude is usually ‘He’s better than the rest of those <insert ethnic slur here>’. There was a guy who managed the apartment building I used to live in who was a member of the KKK, yet he was friendly with a number of black people (though I’m not quite sure you could say they were friends).
The reason it’s dismissed is because nine times out of ten it’s the rationale these people use to convince themselves that they really aren’t bigots despite evidence to the contrary.
I’ve had friends who were fundamentally opposed to homosexuality, yet wanted to be my friend; therefore, I became their “gay friend.” So this justified their behavior to others - if, say, they saw a homosexual and told them they were leading a sinful lifestyle, and that person called them a bigot, why, they could turn right around and say, “But I have a gay friend!” To them, they are therefore living, in their mind, the “love the sinner, hate the sin” mentality (which, IMHO, is a huge crock of bull).
I am only using religion here as an example, but the same could be said of many others. How many white people stood by during the events in the south of the 60’s and felt they didn’t need to get involved because they had a “black friend?” How many Germans ignored the slow encroachment of Nazi curbing of Jewish liberties by convincing themselves that because they had “Jewish neighbors” that by not speaking up they were, in fact, not prejudiced at all?
It comes down to, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”
Because, in my experience, that phrase is almost inevitably preceeded by a comment like “Them niggers are lazy…” or “That kike tried to jew me down”. (Although often the comment is more subltle than those)
There’s a certain irony to statements like: “I’d like to kick that faggot’s ass, swishing around like that. But hey! Don’t get me wrong! Some of my best friends are gay.”
Yeah, basically it’s an invalid argument because you can still be a bigot even if you really do have minority friends. Hell, I’m prejudiced against Creationists but I have a friend who is one.
I should add, however, that sometimes it is. Indeed, whenever some idiot creationist attacks me and says I just hate people who believe in God, I point out that, well, a couple of my best friends are creationists. I generally acknowledge the fact that this sounds like a cliche, but it’s also true. As London_Calling said, it’s not verifiable on, say, a message board (but then anybody who would accuse me of lying about it probably isn’t going to listen to anything I have to say anyway).
But I think this sort of thing applies differently when it comes to matters like creation/evolution than it does when it comes to race relations. I don’t go around muttering that creationists are [insert slur here]. I just point out that they are wrong, and otherwise point to specific instances related to the specific creationist with whom I’m arguing. Discussions about race/anti-semitism/etc. don’t generally go that way.
Let me give you an example from real life. When my family moved into our new house (some 25+ years ago), one of the neighbors introduced himself to my parents. When he found out we were Jewish, he said, with no additional prompting, “Some of my best friends are Jewish.” Now, why did he say that? He wasn’t being accused of anything. And, after getting to know this man for a while, it certainly wasn’t true.
Mods, thanks for fixing my post title. (Though there really should be a set of quotation marks in front of “Some.” But it’s not like I’m complaining or anything…)
As the long as it is the truth, and there is a true friendship there, not just a cover.(like esprix’s example)
I am a white guy(I’m REALLY white:)) who considers myself bullet-proof on the racism charge. My whole life I have had friends of pretty much every race, religion and sex. These people were not my friends because of a specific effort to be diverse, they were my friends because they were people I encountered and we had something in common.
My best friend and business partner is black, my fiance is filipino and the rest of my friends cut across most of the other racial/religous boundries.
However, I hate Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I think they cause racism, and I think they know it. If we toned down the rhetoric and actually tried to make progress on race relations, they would be broke.
I have a lot of controversial positions on race, but I refuse to believe that my positions are grounded in racism.
If there is a history of a person living a life that includes a diverse background, then I do think it is a valid defense. If there is only a history of one or two aquaintences, then I think it means nothing.
I think its not a valid defense because it promotes the segregation that isn’t supposed to exist. Picture this coversation that I had a few years ago with someone
arl: “Ah, I don’t have any problem with them.”
OtherGuy: “With who?”
arl: “Blacks.”
OtherGuy: “I see.”
Well, that was just a snippet, but anyway after a series of conversations(over a week or two) I would find the phrase “Who” in response to my “them” quite a bit, and suddenly it dawned on me: duh. “They” are not a “they”
Since then I’ve tried to realize how much racism was bred into me even though I’ve resisted (you know, the whole family thing). I was literally raised racist and even though I rejected it outwardly I never quite got rid of it until I met that chink…er, I mean guy
So anyway, the point is “they” are not a “they.” Until everyone sees that (including anyone who uses “us” to refer to a race) we’ll never have quite beat that horse to the ground.
Incidentally, I’ve even tried working harder to eliminate other categorical distinctions from my vocabulary besides race. “Illuminatus! Trilogy” has an enlightening view on the whole “society-trained” thing hat really made me think. Still ain’t going PC, though. I’ve just begun to view people as people, not as {insert categorical distinction here}.
Long and hard is the path, though…
I’ll go with Badtz Maru on this one. It is possible for a person to be extremely prejudiced against a group while being friends with a member of that group. Generally, if the person is nailed to the wall on the subject, they’ll point out that their “friend(s)” are different than “the rest of those people.”
Leaving aside the issue of just how good that friendship is, the person described can be quite comfortable eating with, working with, playing with, borrowing things from, and loaning things to their friend(s), but simply feel that all the other people in the category of the friend(s) have all the bad qualities that they associate with that category.
We had a poster here, for a while, who showed up on any thread that ever said something negative about Jews, yet was married to a (non-observant) Jew. (Perhaps the poster had in-law problems. Still, I never found a reason to disbelieve that the spouse’s cultural heritage was Jewish, but some of the most insensitive and hateful things I have seen regarding Jews came from that poster.)
It is entirely possible for somebody to be racist and have plenty of friends who are people of color. I’ll lay out a couple of scenarios…
What white folks don’t seem to understand is that many people of color are perfectly willing to be friends with racists and may even share many of their opinions. It’s called** internalized racism**. An unfortunately large amount of people of color hate themselves. They may bleach their hair, marry a white person, or listen to Barry Manilow, but basically they are trying to forget the fact that they are different. They are trying to assimilate as quickly as possible and many times they take mainstream American racist views and run with them. You’ll even hear them initiating the racist comments: “I’m Black and I know how they are…”
I think the other type of person of color who makes this scenario work is more prevalent. It’s the person of color who has no connection to their identity. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard an Asian person talk about how they grew up in an all-white neighborhood, went to all-white schools, grew up to realize all their friends were white and they had no ethnic identity. People in this situation often talk about casual racist remarks being thrown around but they aren’t going to call anybody on it—they are powerless and disconnected. A person may be culturally white but still have the skin color to qualify as one of those mythical “friends.”
The interesting thing is that white folks are often more than willing to seek out these kinds of people and befriend them. I think it often alleviates their white guilt or eases their conscience about the fact that they have racist views. My girlfriend is Black (not saying that to prove anything) and we often laugh at people who want to be best friends after meeting her once—“they really want a Black friend, don’t they?”
Basically, people of color aren’t a monolithic group of righteous people crusading against racism. Many of us are lost or confused. Whenever people use that “some of my best friends” argument, I always think about some lone brown person hanging out with a bunch of white folks, sitting mostly silently and maybe laughing uncomfortably at a racist comment, just so they don’t stand out. It’s sad, really.
I think part of it is that you don’t consider them to just be friends, you consider them to be “whatever” friends (i.e. black friends, female friends). If you were really not a bigot, you would just think they were friends, without classifying them.
[tangential hijack]
But, David B, you think that creationists’ thinking is fundamentally flawed. How can you be “best friends” with a creationist? I don’t mean to question your relationships, but I’m really curious.
A devoutly religious person and a devoutly atheistic person, it seems to me, can each understand and respect the other’s belief system. Similarly with racial differences, gender differences, sexual orientation issues, abortion, etc. - in each case, forgetting about any moral judgment that may be rendered, it is certainly possible (and it is to be hoped) that individuals on either side of the debate can understand and respect the beliefs on the other side.
Your comments on these boards have shown you to be disdainful of creationist arguments, because creationists are (verifiably) wrong. You have not shown yourself to be anti-religious, and have joined many discussions that show that it is possible to be truly devout and yet subscribe to the theory of evolution.
As an example - I am strongly pro-choice. I have a very good friend who is strongly anti-choice, believing as she does that abortion is murder. I respect her beliefs, she respects mine, and we avoid that topic. If you don’t respect your friends’ beliefs in this area, how does the friendship work? Do you just compartmentalize it?
Sorry if you find this question impertinent or otherwise offensive - God knows I have enough “But you can’t be friends with that [insert epithet here]” friendships that I should be the last one to throw stones. But I was really struck by your post and wanted to ask.
[/hijack]
W/r/t the OP, I agree with Badtz Maru, Esprix and Fenris - it’s more of a psychological block used by the bigot to prevent him/herself from recognizing his/her bigotry.
I’ve just begun to view people as people, not as {insert categorical distinction here}.