Warning Prejudice
Today's Link
The Jury is Still Out
Saying for the Day
If you judge people you have no time to love them. ~Mother Teresa
Picture of the Day
Alex my favorite cook
The Jury is Still Out
Saying for the Day
If you judge people you have no time to love them. ~Mother Teresa
Picture of the Day
Alex my favorite cook
Warning Prejudice Prejudice Prejudice
We humans build mental boxes and we stick in them the things we hate or fear. The people who have wronged us. With our box we protect ourselves. Into that box we put everybody in that category. Did a Christian cause you pain throw all Christians in the box. They are all alike you know.
Did a Muslim blow up a building. Throw all Muslims in your box. They are alike you know.
Did you read where a gay molested a child? Throw gays in your box. They are all alike you know.
Does your neighbor on welfare have things you can’t afford? Throw welfare people in your box. They are all crooks you know.
Did you read where a black person raped a white girl ? Throw black people in your box . They are all alike you know.
Did you run into a bigoted white person from the country? Throw red necks in your box . They are all alike you know.
And so we build our prejudice boxes. We people them with the worst of every group. In go the loud mouths, the pushy, the ones that hurt us, the one’s that scare us. Then we see everyone in the box as being like that.
Now we are free to demean, insult, make fun of anybody in the group. Why. Because you know what those …….are like.
More than that we can attribute all evil things to them.
If something gets blown up then it’s probably those Muslims. You know what they are like.
Or a wild conservative who hates the government. You know what they are like.
When we discover it really was some guy trying to kill the person who took his girl that doesn’t change our attitude at all.
The other day a man got killed in New York by a mob going shopping, a terrible thing.
I read this on a blog.
“although I’ll bet you many of those brutish shoppers are the same people who carry on about ‘Jesus being taken out of Christmas’ and complain when a sales person they didn’t trample to death says ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than ‘Merry Christmas”
Somebody has a prejudice about Christians so it’s easy enough to see them as killers. You know what those Christians are like.
One could just as easily have said the group was probably made up of those anti-abortion people . They have so little respect for life. You know what they are like.
In fact if you try hard enough you can stick this one to almost any of your prejudice groups. You know what they are like.
The sad thing is when we demean the group we demean everybody in it.
When I read the above quote. I thought of two little old ladies from my last parish. They would never go to a black Friday sale. But they were upset that stores profiting from Christmas wouldn’t call it Christmas. I tried to picture them leading a charge into a Wal Mart store it was just too ludicrous a picture. They were demeaned by that statement. They deserve better.
Prejudice always demeans. It reduces a group of people to the level of its worst members. People deserve better than that. Groups deserve better than that.
But we humans hold onto our prejudices. We defend them., They make us feel superior. They make us feel righteous.
What kinds of boxes do you have?
News from Pigeon Falls
The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normalWell Tammy and Tommy UK got together last night in the old barn. They sat in the old car and talked about the coming shadow. They talked about Herman's last vision:
“the puzzle is in your past. You have the pieces. “
They talked about the message inside the driblet. They decided that they needed to talk to Herman. That he was the seer in the driblet. That he knew the answer but he didn’t know he knew it. They need to act before the shadow comes.
They also talked about the cow, rocking chair, and bird and how they must have some role.
Then just before they were called in to eat Tommy UK leaned over and kissed Tammy. Then he kissed her again. It was wonderful. It was great. It was time to eat. And so it ended.
When they came into the house Tammy’s mother said “ You look different. Did you solve the problem?”
Of course they hadn’t and they were not about to kiss and tell.
Wrap Up
Another rough breathing day and I went through two little tanks of oxygen again. In the morning Betty went to Bible Study at Church. I did some Christmas shopping on line and finished a batch of slides. In the afternoon we worked on the layout. The " last" module is shapping up. It needs some electrical wqiring and some plastering but it is almost done. Tomorrow, however,we work on e-Bay stuff. Coming up I visited my number one link list and left comments. Now I need a breathing treatment.
GBYA
********************************************************GBYA
21 Comments:
I knew it. Run Tammy Run!
Hey, thanks for the shout out and commenting on my blog!
This is a great post, Dr. John. Love the quote and love how your comments make me think.
You are SO good! I LOVE that box diagram! I try so hard not to have boxes... but I do have a few... You did forget the box for "skaters" though! Any kid with a skateboard is just rotten to the core! Just ask my sons!
So Tommy & Tammy proceed... yay! I wonder what's in Herman's past... hmm.
You bring it to the point. We all are prejudiced for something or another. And I admit, I have boxes too. I try though to keep them to a minmum.
I enjoyed reading this entry. It really made me think about the boxes that I have. I hope through my faith that I can open each and every one of them.
Loved your post. Did you know that the word stereotype was originally a printing term? It described the process of reproducing images from “a stereotype plate” Hence, an image perpetuated without change. For humans, discrimination is a cognitive developmental task. Merely separating things from each other to make sense of them without assigning a value.
How discrimination becomes prejudice is a whole other thing.
Even a tightening of the grip on a child’s hand while passing a group of youth sends a subtle signal. Unlearning. By shining a light on what has become an unconscious flicker of thought, a rutted neuronic trail.
my boxes?
people i like
people i don't like
people i'm indifferent to
religion, colour, nationality etc. don't matter one jot to me - or that's what i want to believe (on the second thought, i might be slightly biased after all)
Thank you for reminding us all that prejudice is still around us. We must do better. Ah Tammy and Tommy, such a couple...
Thought provoking.... I guess we all have those boxes in our head no matter how enlightened we think we are.
Excellent post Dr. John!
I do try (try being the operative word) not to stereotype people but I don't always succeed. :(
A Wonderful Post Dr John ~ It made me harken back to the early 1960's and a Lesson my Mum taught my Sister Edie and me that I remember to this day.
We were singing the Eanie Meanie Miney Mo song and when we were told what that awful "N" word meant by Mum never used it ever again. My Mum and Dad taught us to accept everyone for who they are.
Thank you Dr John for sharing this wonderful post.
good post Dr John...and I think most of us have those boxes..but I think as we age and grow wiser we try to diminish them.
TV and movies put forth stereotypes that we might not encounter otherwise. One that hit me in the face is the was cops from the south are portrayed. I absorbed that one without knowing it. I was taught to not hate people because of the way they looked, but I know that I sure wasn't taught to NOT put them in boxes anyway. My dad used to go ballistic when he'd see a man with a beard. I always wondered where that came from.
This is a very good post. I despise prejudice but I know we all have our prejudices. I tend to prejudge people that I perceive as prejudiced. So I guess I'm prejudiced against prejudice.
A very good post, Dr. John!
I try to open my boxes and rut through them every so often and toss stuff out. Thing is, I don't always know that I've created a box until somebody else points it out to me -- then there it is, great big and how the heck did I miss it?
another great post dr. john..Have a nice day! God bless!!!!
If your post would have been a sermon I swear I would listen !! Everything what you wrote is sooooo true ! I hope I don't have any prejudice and always try not to generalize. All the muslim people I met now in Egypt where adorable and so friendly. The families just the same as ours, the kids played together and there was no religion separating people ! Some women wear scarfs and dress at the beach, so what ? They always looked so elegant much better than the "christian" once with their double or triple belly and almost nothing on.
This is exciting to imagine a whole new train village in the works! I will always remember the one in Crystal Falls.
I am getting a little better on my new BLOGspot.
Laughing at Gattina who just placed Christians in the box!
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