Who is a bigot?

Nick_Comstock wrote: I will go to my death bed firmly believing that 99.8% of the people who regularly post on the GRM message boards are dead wrong and completely delusional about what constitutes a hatchback. Call me a bigot if you want to.

no … not a bigot … but I'm sure we can come up with other words to call you …

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Who is on First. What is a Bigot.

wrong …. What's on second

I'd actually rather see the word "bigot" used more frequently, instead of the word "racist", which is misused way too much.

Racism has to do with institutionalized efforts to oppress or cause harm to a people group. Bigotry is about an individual's inappropriate attitudes toward a people group.

Bigots are frequently called racists, which dilutes the real meaning of racism.

Bigotry is ugly, but I think generally falls under free speech. Racism should be fought at every level.

So, people who dislike bigots are...bigots?

tuna55 wrote:

bgkast wrote: I say we use it more to remove the R card connotation.

Did you know that humans don't technically have more than one race? I have an issue with that word, too, but we'll save that for another off-topic event later on.

I'll get in on that one. I'm an anthropologist, this is one of the only topics we talk about regularly that any non-anthropologists actually want to hear about!

Woody wrote:

tuna55 wrote:

bgkast wrote: I say we use it more to remove the R card connotation.

Did you know that humans don't technically have more than one race?

Do dogs only have one breed?

Breed =/= race. Dogs only have one species. That species prior to breeding had more genetic diversity than the whole of the human race. Good luck making a 'breed' of humans with the same diversity in body size, for example. You'd need some people 30lbs, some 400lbs (not counting fatties). also don't confuse visual difference with something like species difference.

Sorry, wrong thread

Edit: I feel I need to qualify something here- Race is a tricky subject. It does not exist the way people think it does (basically, tuna is right), but it does exist in other ways, often because people think it does, sometimes with a side of bigotry, so this is semi related.

Colloquial usage takes precedence over dictionary usage in conversational english. Unless you are writing a scientific journal if everyone is using a word a certain way that's the what the word means.

Bigot in colloquial english means the same thing as racist in general except when applying to things like gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. That is how it's used and if you speak english you need to accept it.

dculberson wrote: I agree people use it too much, but you left out part of the definition:

especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance

I don't think it's good to use the term bigot in reference to stuff like tools, pets, car marquees. That's a dilution of the term.

You've never met some of my relatives. A few are such die-hard Ford guys that they couldn't imagine anyone idiotic enough to buy anything foreign or -gasp!- from General Motors, unless that person had eaten lead paint in large quantities as a child.

My brother, the college drop out, thought I, the graduate student, was downright stupid for buying a Mazda product...until he drove a miata. Then he bought one and waited quite a while before telling me! i think he was scared of the much deserved 'i told you so' moment.

Duke wrote:

HiTempguy wrote:

Duke wrote: So, therefore, hating bigots does not make you a bigot, provided you hate their bigotry as it occurs and do not simply stereotype the group they belong to as all sharing that bigotry.

What I get out of this is that everyone is a bigot. Some are just bigot'd in ways different from others.

How so? You're only a bigot if you try to infringe on the rights of others based on their differences from you.

Careful with that definition. Without going into too much anthropology here, there was at one point a man named Boas who had a great way of approaching other cultures. It was called cultural relativism. Basically, before that point, many people were studying other cultures as 'primitives' or on some sort of hierarchy where all cultures could be ranked along a scale of how inferior they were to the resercher's 'civilized' culture. Cultural relativism says you have to understand the customs of a people on their own terms, not on your terms, as that will always create a bias against whomever you are studying. People ran with this to the point of complete moral relativism, accepting any customs found in any culture.

Then, upon considering this approach, people ran into issues of human rights, involving cannibalism (not as common anymore), female genital cutting (VERY common) and others. With the genital cutting, it is an important right of passage in many cultures. Some versions of it are fairly benign but others can permanently mutilate women. Where do you draw the line between letting people be themselves (i.e. not being a bigot under your definition), and stopping the mutilation of what are often children (at the risk of appearing bigoted)? Here people are trying to 'save' women from their own cultures. Are they bigoted, or stopping a human rights violation? It turned out to be an easy(er) choice when confronted with cannibalism, but when the 'rights violation' is done by a different and less powerful culture/race (they're mainly African cultures) and to a different gender than, say, male circumcision in the West (there's another whole topic for you), the line between protection and bigotry gets fuzzy.

kanaric wrote: Colloquial usage takes precedence over dictionary usage in conversational english. Unless you are writing a scientific journal if everyone is using a word a certain way that's the what the word means. Bigot in colloquial english means the same thing as racist in general except when applying to things like gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. That is how it's used and if you speak english you need to accept it.

So, what you are saying is that if everyone is ignorant and using a word in a manner that is incorrect, their usage of the word becomes the defacto definition, and the correct dictionary definition no longer matters. Furthermore, I need to accept it if I feel like speaking English.

What a crock of horseE36 M3.

When I use a word incorrectly, I appreciate being shown the right usage. Then I do something really radical- I learn. Forgive me for my foolishness, but personally I subscribe to the idea that everyone can learn.

You have bought a lie. You have been told enough times that the word means something it does not, and now you want to claim superiority and impose your "rightness" on others.

The problem is that it undermines the efforts of 70 years of civil rights efforts, and subverts the efforts. It negates the progress we've made, and introduces this whole new effort of thought policing.

Creating a culture which gives everyone equal opportunity and rights under the law is important, and attainable. Policing people to act nice and only say what other people like is not only unattainable, it is wrong, and conflicts with the principles of the founding of our nation.

I accept that there are some ugly people in this world who think badly of me or various people groups. Bigots. I can't fix them, and it's not my job to do so. In fact, I will defend to the death their right to have the freedom to disagree. The dissenting minority voice is the one protected by the Constitution, not the mainstream agreed upon one.

I do not accept racism in any form. It is not acceptable to have systematic methods of oppressing people based solely on their skin color, gender, etc. That's racism.

The world should just chill out and interbone.