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- Jul 17, 2016
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Jesse Jackson said “There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
If a black civil right activist can be prejudiced against his own people, surely it can happen to anybody.
My definition of a racist is not simply a person who has racial prejudice, it’s somebody who thinks it’s justified, and therefore needs no correction regardless of facts.
Everybody has a certain prejudice, it’s a survival mechanism built into our brain. If bad things happen to us whenever we meet somebody with a green shirt, pretty soon we’ll make a subconscious association between green shirt and danger. The same goes for skin color. It’s called classical conditioning, made famous by Pavlov and his dog.
What makes reasonable people different from garden-variety racists is the former continuously challenge their prejudice and assumptions. A racist is like a Pavlov dog that keeps salivating after a bell, even years after the bell was last associated with food.
Having lived in USA and witnessed multiple crimes by black people (and almost fell victim to one), I’d be lying if I say that I don’t share Jesse Jackson’s instinct. However, I continuously temper my gut reaction with reason and logic. While I may be a little faster to judge a black person negatively, I spend a lot of time second guessing my initial reaction, and would be very quick to make a positive adjustment as warranted.
If a black civil right activist can be prejudiced against his own people, surely it can happen to anybody.
My definition of a racist is not simply a person who has racial prejudice, it’s somebody who thinks it’s justified, and therefore needs no correction regardless of facts.
Everybody has a certain prejudice, it’s a survival mechanism built into our brain. If bad things happen to us whenever we meet somebody with a green shirt, pretty soon we’ll make a subconscious association between green shirt and danger. The same goes for skin color. It’s called classical conditioning, made famous by Pavlov and his dog.
What makes reasonable people different from garden-variety racists is the former continuously challenge their prejudice and assumptions. A racist is like a Pavlov dog that keeps salivating after a bell, even years after the bell was last associated with food.
Having lived in USA and witnessed multiple crimes by black people (and almost fell victim to one), I’d be lying if I say that I don’t share Jesse Jackson’s instinct. However, I continuously temper my gut reaction with reason and logic. While I may be a little faster to judge a black person negatively, I spend a lot of time second guessing my initial reaction, and would be very quick to make a positive adjustment as warranted.