Art ReSearch: bigotry

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in complete darkness we are all the same. it's only your knowledge and widsom that seprates us.. don't let you eyes decieve you!
mh


I'm still shocked by the bigotry around me. I had thought we were beyond that. I guess ignorance prevails. sadly...
Anonymous


We all have subtle differences that we use to compare and contrast ourselves from one another. Comparing and contrasting ourselves from one another is a normal part of our cognitive process. It's how we identify each other. A problem occurs when we attach a measure of value (or worth) to those differences that identify who we are.

For example, someone with gray hair may consider themself to be "old" and of little value, while another may consider themself to be "distinguished" and special because they have gray hair. Do you have a characteristic that makes you feel "special" in comparison to most people. Or do you have a characteristic that makes you feel inferior to most people? If you feel special because you are black and society doesn't treat you like you are special, is it valid for you to be angry? Or if you feel inferior because you are Gay and you are treated "special" because you are Gay, is it right for you to feel superior?

Our differences distinguish who we are. Everyone is entitled to like or dislike our differences, to value or recoil from them as well. But human beings have value independent of their differences. A difference may distinguish someone like a name or a label or a color. It may determine how we are identified. But it doesn't necessarily provide a measure of ones value or worth as a person. People have value and worth in spite of their differences. It'when we think someone is better or worse because of a difference that leads to Bigotry.

Anonymous


The 6 is 9.....The "bigots" are discriminated against by unsuspecting bigots. They forget that race is more than skin-deep. That homosexuality is a matter of choice, not birthrite. Only when one reaches the age of puberty does one make a sexual "choice". Xenophobia seems to be the call of the day. A call sent out in a world of shrinking resources and overpopulation. Rats in a cage bent on self-destruction in order to cull out the weak...physically, mentally, and spiritually....regardless of race, creed, nationality, gender, religion, or other trivialities such as sexual preference, wealth, ideal, or prejudices.
Anonymous


Unfortunately, the human brain appears to be "wired" for bigotry. We are designed to recognize and contrast differences between us. It's what we do after we recognize our differences that determines whether we are bigotted or not.

It wouldn't matter if we lived in society where everyone were "white" or not. Even if this were so, we would possess differences. Purely as an example: Would we suddenly develop a protected class for people who had big noses? Would we suddenly deny the "big noses" jobs and force them to live in ghettos?

And then there's the question: Is someone different by "choice" or by some quality they are born with? Do we condemn someone who is different by "choice" and accept someone who is different by "birth?" And then there are those that are products of their environment: Do we condemn someone who is different from most people as a result of being abused or neglected by their parents? How do we treat the child-molester or sex-offender who was molested as a child and is the product of the way they were raised? Do we simply lock em up? How do we answer these questions?

These are all very complex questions. Certainly those that are a danger to society must be restrained in some way. But our prison system sucks because it doesn't help people become more "normal." And what is "normal?" Normal is what is believed by most of society as acceptable behavior, thoughts, responses, and so forth. If there were no concept of "normal" there would be no laws.

But a bigot is usually someone that has decided that they don't like someone who possesses differences from them. Quite often, the bigot is not justified in their dislike. In fact, they may dislike someone else because of the color of their skin but they will say: "Oh I just don't like that person because I don't like their attitude." Hell, attitude has nothing to do with it. They've just got a problem accepting the color of the other persons skin.

It's a known fact that when you go to a job interview, that most interviewers will decide whether they "like" you in the first 3 to 5 minutes of the interview. The rest of the interview is used to ask questions that will collect information to justify the decision they already made in the first 3-5 minutes. Is this bigotry? Of course it is! Why? Because they aren't looking for the best candidate, they are looking for someone they like. And if you do get hired because of your skills, the one thing that will get you fired the most is having other work mates that do not like you! So in the end, there's a little bigot in most people. We've got to tame this bigot and get it under control! That's why I say, the human brain appears to be "wired" for bigotry.

Roger Pinkard
Portland, Oregon

Anonymous


emotional inability to tolerare/accept dfferent point of view.
Anonymous


tony scalici
Anonymous


"We're all supposed to celebrate diversity without pointing out that people are different."
-Dennis Miller

Anonymous


a bigot is a man who tells his child she cannot go over to my daughters house to work on their school project together when "that man" is there. "Why?" Asked my daughter? The Answer: "I don't know - he says we don't know him." But her Daddy doesn't like niggers, which is what he likes to call them.

I think I'll tell him that my friend is Black, Indian and White and if he likes, I'll only date the white part when his daughter is over.

Anonymous


Someone's reality. Another person's nightmare.
asiaticblackwoman_1@yahoo.com


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big bigger biggot
Anonymous



1.
a. To come into possession or use of twice; two receive: bigot cats for her birthday.
b. To meet with or incur twice: bigot nothing but troubles for her efforts.

2.
a. To go after and obtain twice: bigot books at the library; bigot breakfasts in town.
b. Two go after and bring: bigot me a pillow and a pillow.
c. To purchase; buy twice: i bigot groceries twoday.

3.
a. To acquire and aquire as a result of action or effort: He bigot his information from the Internet. You can't bigot waters out of stones, unless you can.
b. Twice earn: bigot high marks in math plus five stitches.
c. To accomplish or attain as a result of military action. Bigot much dead and land, thanks for the money.

4. To obtain by 2 concessions or 2 requests: couldn't bigot the times off; bigot permission to go twice.
5.
a. To arrive at; reach again: When did you bigot home?
b. Two reach and board; 2 catch: She bigot her planes two minutes before takeoffs.

uniglut


A bigot is one who fears knowledge and understanding. One who takes comfort in thier own safe little world without risk or color.
Jeanne


we seem to be less open about our prejudices now than in previous times, but they are still there...
Anonymous


hmmmmm...a BIGOT is a social construct.....
Anonymous


A bigot is afraid of not knowing, not being in control, of being seen as less than.
Anonymous


"How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions" Logan Paersall Smiht
Anonymous


We teach best what we need to learn the most.

Anonymous


It seems to me if we wish to avoid bigotry, we should practice compassion and senitivity to what we say to others and what we say about others, in print, in conversation, and in thought.
Louise


Fear and Acute Selfishness.
Eleanor


big-o-try: a big ol try to make anyone feel inferior.
Anonymous


That which judges with only the right of birth, which we all have.
Anonymous


What is a bigot? No easy answers, do we all have an inner bigot? I don't know. I guess it is easy to say, "Him, over there, that IS a bigot! That person who acts that way and says those things." How about if you just think it? are you a bigot? I say yes, you are. The wake up call, the biggest change has to be in your thinking, with your heart leading the way.

"Thank God our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us til we take the longes stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. Where are you making for? It takes so many thousand years to wake, but will you wake for pity's sake?" Christopher Fry, from " A Sleep of Prisoners"

Lorena


Many times, in order to define ourselves we have to identify 'the other'. Too often we take the easy path to feeling good about ourselves, - by putting someone else down, and by establishing through our desperate beliefs that 'the other' is inferior. By all these methods we are trying really to classify ourselves, and make sure of our stay.

I wish that bigots would listen to reason and see their images when a mirror is held to them. It is an ugly face.

If I belong to 'the other' group, what should my response be? Do I pose as the one who can see through illogic and perjudice, and by intellectualising the whole issue, do I temper my blind rage at being identified and lablled as inferior?

Anonymous


Bigotry is the meanness one asserts over someone else who is different. They display an intolerance and superiority that excludes others not like themselves.
Anonymous


Bigotry: the systematic application of negative valuations of others, based on ignorance, fear, and most of all on need
Anonymous


We are all bigots.
Anonymous


Bigotry is lack of feeling at home in one's own skin--lack of SELF assurance--Ignorance--Fear of difference.
Anonymous


To me, bigotry results when a person believes her/his own personal experiences are universal. This is so amazing. Each one of us (including you) thinks the way we do because of the myriad of experiences we have had in very specific ways, perhaps even in specific orders. How little we see.

Different media (television, literature, film, the web) may give us glimpses into other thought processes, but they are not ours, though we may subscribe to them.

Hearing multiple voices on a subject gives us an opportunity to choose from a wider variety of input. Participation creates it as a new personal experience.

People want to fit the pieces together. Bigots are defined as one who is prejudiced against and intolerant of any group or belief that is not his or her own. How do we fit "them" into the puzzle? Are we listening to each other?

I like this web site. Like so many other things, it is taking the time to explore and participate that makes it a unique learning experience.

Thank you for asking the questions.

tangela@memebeing.com


It is a great topic and I want ot congratulate you for it. One thing however: I do not see the art in this site. It is linguistic, but not visually interesting. Sorry.
Anonymous


He who is without sin, cast the first stone.
Anonymous


bigotry is everywhere
Anonymous


Bigotry is the art of seeing oneself in one of those distortion circus mirrors where you look huge and important and everyone else, if visible, is tiny and down off to the side.

Bigotry is the art of having a big mouth and a closed mind.

Bigotry is the art of keeping infant tendencies way into adulthood.

Anonymous


My dad.
Anonymous


Bigotry is colorblind, it permeates all races, religions and social groups.
Anonymous


Bigotry is an incurable disease.
Anonymous


My grandparents were segregationists.

I stayed with them briefly when I was 10 in Washington, DC when my mother was ill. This would have been 1947. The kids in the neighborhood were fun. One was the janitor's daughter. "Black as the ace of spades," as my grandad said. After a few days, they told me I was "too old" to play with her, "because she's colored."

This made no sense to me. On the other hand, I lived in a Washington suburb with no black kids at all, which was probably worse.

While in high school in Pennsylvania I visited them. We went to the National Museum of Art, because I was a budding artist. He refused to eat in the cafeteria, because the nigger secretaries ate there. Next, he and other family members told me which cab companies to avoid, because they had colored
drivers.

Little did they know I was going to a Quaker high school, and to the Philadelphia inner city on weekend workcamps to help very nice black people who lived in barbaric slums!

I decided to press the issue on the cabs. Whew! The subject of race, which was never overtly talked about was suddenly the conversation! And grandad, who was from a lovely Southern plantation family, started spouting the venomous cant that people marvelled at from Southern rednecks. He got red in
the face. He talked rapidly and passionately. There would be a race war, he said, if you gave them an inch. They would marry our daughters. I was a target of being married by them, or worse. I had no idea, he said, what it was like to live where you were outnumbered by these people who were one step
from the jungle.

It sounded like a canned speech. This was orthodoxy, about on the same level of conviction as Stalinists who were "liquidating" their opponents.

We never spoke of the subject again.

The next year at my Quaker boarding school I volunteered to have a black roommate.

After leaving the East upon graduating from high school in 1954, I never when back until all those folks had died. Thirty years.

By then, 1984, I noticed an amazing difference. Black people no longer shuffled down the street averting their eyes. They looked at white people! They happily gave them directions! They were proud of themselves and of their city.

Anonymous


Bigotry is thinking that your beliefs, particularly religious, are the only ones that are right and true and not allowing those who don't agree with you to express their beliefs and values, even to the point of persecuting them.
Anonymous


Bigotry is when one feels that their race or their way of doing things is better than anyone else's. Especially someone different.
Anonymous


A bigot is an individual ignorant to the ways, beliefs, rights, religion, or nationality of others.
Anonymous


I often set myself apart from others...I feel different..this comes from fear. I am afraid of who I am and who they are. This is not a fun way to live.
Anonymous


As I breathe, I am a bigot.
As humans we need to base our interactions on presumption in order to give us a better handle on unfarmiliar situations, Dont we? Is this my excuse for my own bigotry? Where are to tools to teach us how to survive without categorization?
If my thoughts influence my actions and inturn influence those around me. How do I not think these thoughts? Can one exude only positive energy? Does black need white? Is the world too big to be fair?


bigot #7758930844810


I think the technical differentiation between someone who is a bigot vs. someone who is prejudice is that the bigot acts on their thoughts. But that seems like an unneccessarily fine distinction. It all starts with the thought. The categorization. The stereotypes. The judgement.

The "false sense of separate self" is how the Buddhists describe it. In Buddhist philosophy this is addressed at even the most seemingly unimportant level. If we eat a peach it does not taste "like a peach" it tastes like "this peach". We are encouraged not to substitute our illusion (or delusion) about what we think something is for the reality of the present moment.

So to me a bigot is all of us when we substitute a preconceived notion with the actual experience of a person. When we prematurely close ourselves off from someone.

Anonymous


A few ways to determine a bigot is to see if:

it was their parent's opinion

it has a strong aspect of cruelity

it involves fear (often of the unknown)

it makes them feel "superior"

Anonymous


Myself, since I am intolerant of bigots so that makes me a bigot too?
Anonymous


Miss Big OT lives under the bridge in a city in Santa Clara County. She is also a he and established residency after her supervisor's insulting comments to co-workers about her sexuality forced her to quit her job. She in turn was spreading rumors about her supervisor, Mr. Big OT, specifically addressing his rather boring sexuality. Mr. Big OT was fired for his behavior two days after Miss Big OT quit. Miss Big OT is currently unaware of this fact.
Anonymous


I always thought that a Bigot was someone who has rigid views about religion and that their prejudice (or dislike/hatred) was focused on those people who had different religious beliefs. My UK/English dictionary supports this definition.

Since moving to the US, the word seems to be used more frequently and loosely. For example, I would call George W. a Bigot because he has fixed and rigid views about the environment: believing that his unscientific grasp of randomly chosen facts gives him the superiority of righteousness in making decisions to pollute the planet.

Thus, my US definition of the word Bigot is as follows: someone who has fixed and rigid views about religion/race/gender or any other issue; where the Bigot feels superior to others in his/her opinions. The Bigot is someone who is prejudiced against a group of people and that this prejudice can give rise to anger or unreasonable behavior. The views and opinions of the Bigot are often unscientifically formed and without significant research. Texts chosen to support the Bigot's beliefs can often come from "credible" sources such as the Bible. For example, anti-gay Bigots will quote passages from the Bible to support their beliefs and ignore any opposing scientific and social-scientific research.

Anonymous


Big Ol' Tyrant=bigot
Anonymous


an obtuse, myopic person, a dickhead.
Anonymous


me. i am a bigot.
Anonymous


On a CNN talkshow this week they were describing Rednecks as bigots.

Confused the hell out of me.

Anonymous