Prejudice and Reading Minds

Imagine this scenario. Bob avoids people at all possible. If someone is walking toward him on a sidewalk he walks away from the person. What do you think of Bob? Is he just shy? Or is there another reason? Maybe he thinks he is superior than other people. Who knows. What if Bob is X, and those people he is avoiding is Y. What about now? Is he being prejudice against people different from him? Or would there be another reason? Maybe in his past when Bob was young he had bad experience with a person who had an attributes of Y. For example, let's say Bob is white (attribute X) and he was badly beaten and mugged by a black (attribute Y) man when he was younger. That incident left a strong negative impression of black men. So, after that incident Bob is now scared of black men and now avoids them. He may even avoid any black person--the fear may have been even more generalized. To anyone who does not know Bob he looks like a racist, but in fact he isn't.

Second scenario. Mary is a white employer interviewing Tom a short black man for a job. After several interviews she hires a white woman. Is Mary a racist? Before you say yes, remember I said Tom is a short black man. Maybe Mary did not hire Tom because he is short. Mary could be a tall woman. Or maybe she did not hire him because he is a man--Mary just likes to hire women for some reason. Or it could be Tom had a smug attitude during the interview that Mary detected. Or maybe the reason is that Mary saw Tom wear a small Christian cross around his neck. It could even be she thought Tom would not fit into the "business culture." of her business. Then again maybe Tom was just not right or qualified for the job. Anyway, I could list other numerous reasons. Again, no-one knows for sure why (except Mary and God) why she picked a white woman for the job.

The above scenario reminds of an incident that actually happened to my parents when they were landlords of an apartment house. A single black man wanted to rent an apartment. My parents told him no. He notified the EEOC because he thought he was being discriminated against. My parents told the EEOC that the reason they did not rent to him was because they only rented to families and he was a single person--it actually stated that in their newspaper advertisement. The apartment the man wanted was a bigger than the other apartments in the building and my parents wanted to save that for families.

What does the above scenarios teach us? Well, for one, reading someone's mind is a tricky proposition. Unless someone says or writes his prejudices down (like Hitler did) you have no idea if the person is a "ist" for sure. Two, there maybe a lot of factors involved why someone acts like (s)he does.

If a person has a fear of another group of people different from him it's usually because he does not know any positive people who are different from him/her. The positive examples would diminish the fear of the group. For example, if Bob fears black people and gets to meet and know a good black person then his fear would diminish. If he keeps meeting good black people eventually his fear would vanish.

Now, if a person thinks (s)he is superior to another group different from him/her that's a different situation. Usually, that is something that is taught to you from people you respect and is harder to counteract. Those are the people that can be dangerous. The phobic people like Bob won't harm the people who scare him--he will try to avoid them. But people with a superiority complex who also thinks a group of people are not human you might end up with genocide.

Racism or any kind of "ism" is bad only if the "ist" acts on his beliefs. For instance, if a Muslim goes into a building and kills one Jewish person and injures some other people. But if these Muslims hang out and don't commit any crimes that is okay. In the USA it's called Freedom of Association.

I can think of individual reasons for not liking someone without resorting to an "ism."