This is an article I was dreading writing because I predicted the USA was going to re-reach this point. I’ve always denounced hate speech, let’s heal the USA.
The company you keep…
There is a saying – you become the average of the five closest people in your life. That is why it is important to know who we let into our lives. If you associate with people who treat others well, then you’re likely to normalize that in your life. Conversely, if you associate with people who are divisive, this will also become the norm in your life. The same is true for any type of attribute your group has. For example, if you associate yourself with sport fans, or gear heads, or party bros, or intellectuals… people can change for better or worse.
I am very selective of whom I spend time with and would prefer to be alone than being in the company of divisive, shallow, or hateful people. I used to say in jest, that I prefer being alone to blowing my average. And the fact is that if I realize that a group of people in my environment – regardless of what they look like – are divisive in any way, then I’d rather be alone if the company of inclusive people is not available.
Which brings me to today’s topic. A lot of people who engage in any degree of hate speech often don’t realize they are doing so. In fact, inside their inner circle these “quiet” conversations might be said in “jest,” or “between friends,” or any other in-their-minds “justifiable” rational to perform mental gymnastics on any potentially prejudicial trope against a particular group of people. In fact, this offensive rhetoric could have not even registered to them as such, and they would feel offended if you pointed out to them that they are being offensive.
Spoiler alert, those who are prejudicious are often the thinner-skinned people alive. They will call everybody else a “snowflake” or any other epithet that implies them as weak or oversensitive, yet they are the loudest to cry foul if someone happen to hurt their delicate feelings. I’ve seen this so many times it is uncanny, and it never ceases to amaze me how these same individuals are lost in the irony. They are quick to chastise but are extremely sensitive if they get checked.
Be honest with yourself, not with me… have you EVER engaged among a “trusted groups” of friends or family in any conversation that is prejudicial towards another group of human beings? This other group could be from a different skin color, national origin, ethnic group, orientation, religion, political stance, etc. Follow up question, where you an active acolyte to that discussion, or where you a dissenting voice? You don’t have to answer out loud, this article is about introspection.
Let’s define PREJUDICE
Prej-u-dice
- Noun: 1. Preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Similar: preconceived ideas, preconceptions, preconceived notions, prejudgments. 2. LAW – Harm or injury that result or may result from some action or judgment. Similar: Detriment, harm, disadvantage, damage, injury, hurt
- Verb: 1. Give rise to prejudice in (some); make biased Similar: bias, influence, sway, predispose make biased, make partial 2. LAW – Harm or to (state of affairs) Similar: damage, be detrimental to be prejudicial to be disadvantageous to
The fact is that a person could be prejudicious to another regardless of their sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even if they are higher or lower in the perceived or mandated social structure. Generally, it happens if the group they are being prejudicial toward is in some way outside of their bubble – not always, but generally. And yes, in some places around the world to this day, and through history, people were born in some sort of class system where they were stuck therein for their entire lives, regardless of merit.
A more on-the-nose example of reality that so many throughout history had to endure was slavery – you pick the historical point in time; it has always been immoral to own another human being as property – period. Throughout history people have also enslaved people with the same skin color and nationality. More obvious skin color differences only exacerbated the problem through the ages.
Back in the day this understanding of “supremacy” was primarily driven if somebody was born into some sort of nobility. Skin color just made it easier for less enlightened people to think that just because they had a different skin color, they were superior to another group of a different skin color. They were wrong then about that misconception as it is wrong today to ascertain that our skin colors make us superior or inferior to any other human being – all human beings are exactly that, human beings.
It's about power over others
Any time subjection of another group has occurred it was because whoever was “in charge” did not want to lose their grip on their absolute power. And yes, this seeking for power was not only hierarchical, but was also a lot more granular than many people imagine. This “birth-right” to power was only sustainable if people below in this insane structure had some sort of “power” over another group that was even further disadvantaged.
Let’s do a bit of a thought experiment – or rather a quick illustrative activity to ensure everybody gets the point.
The premise: An authoritarian monarch, or dictator, or tyrant of any sort (don’t get stuck on semantics please for this example), is ruling with an iron fist to the population who happen to have the misfortune to exist under his precarious whims. How will the power structure treat people on each “perceived” lower echelon?
It could go something like this:
- -The tyrant at the top is surrounded by “yes men & women,” and anybody who speaks out of turn will be violently silenced. This iron-fist directive will be enforced all the way to the bottom echelon.
- -Those in the inner circle of the tyrant will have people “working” under them, who will likely be loyalists. They know the penalty for speaking truth to power, but they are given unlimited power over whomever they are supposed to “supervise.”
- -Those people under these “supervisors” also understand the penalty for speaking out of turn, but since they are the “muscle enforcing” the tyrant’s orders – even if they’re a few echelons below, their “positional authority” over the general population gives them comfort that if anybody in said population dares giving them lip, then these folks in the “general population” could very well end up violently punished by these “muscle enforcers.”
- -The general population is already subjugated for the most part, but that is not the end of the “hierarchy” – historically, a lot of communities at this level will have some family structure… a structure that just so happens to be a patriarchy, with a leading male as the head of the family, and what he says goes. Anybody who speaks out of turn in that family is punished by the patriarch – in THAT household. However, this power would be severely squashed should this patriarch dared to speak with the same tenor to one of those muscle enforcers on the echelon above.
- -The power struggle continues, because from this patriarch, the power dynamics follows to the siblings below. Usually the oldest sibling – often a male sibling, regardless of whether he was the first born or not – will be expected under that construct to eventually become the next patriarch. And depending on how much power this group has – let’s say the male siblings, there might be a power struggle. There might very well have servants underneath them who happen to be in a more destitute position than the mid-range of the general population.
- -These younger siblings know that whoever is the older sibling who is in line for being the next patriarch will shut him up – but this younger sibling could very well be the “mini patriarch” for his own small universe. Perhaps being extremely cruel and unpleasant to his own servants. Servants who know that if they speak out of turn, they would be severely punished for their “insolence.” Does it end there?
- -No, because what if this male servant has a family of his own, or a wife? Who do you think is lower in the hierarchy on THAT household – especially this far down the hierarchy chain? Historically, and until very recently, it was the woman who would be placed at the lower echelon for households. Thank goodness we’ve evolved socially a lot since those days – at least in America, but that sadly remains the norm in many places around the world.
I’ll leave it at that for this illustrative example. I realize it can go many different ways, and it has. For example, there are also many recorded accounts of slave-owner’s wives being very cruel against their slaves, or even women being very divisive against other groups. In other words, this prejudice can happen at any level of this “perceived hierarchy” – and from there is where resentment exacerbates – if people who are in any “echelon” perceive they are being approached, equalized, or worse superseded by an individual who in the prejudicial person’s mind does not belong on a higher echelon. They might want to do any mental gymnastics to justify it - but deep inside they know it bothers them… “how dare these [insert targeted group] to try to be equal to us on this or that regard?” And yes, I’ve heard people say that as late as 2024.
And no, it does not necessarily need to be racial. Just a few decades ago, a woman asserting a poignant observation would have been met with ridicule or “put in her place” – yes, men used to be super nasty – overtly so, just a few decades ago. And it was not only “normal” but “expected.” Even when I was a kid, I remember hearing this from my paternal grandmother – who in a way was actually condoning a lot of those gender “rules and expectations” – again, because it was normalized back then. That despite the fact she was a firecracker and very opinionated herself. But she mentioned that when she was younger the saying was: “girls should be seen but not heard.” - I know, it used to make me cringe back then too, and I was about 8 years old when she told us that story.
Have you ever seen some of those exceedingly misogynistic advertisements or TV shows from the 50s? It was still pretty bad in decades after… but it got a bit better – still not 100% great for women, and there is no shortage of misogynistic individuals who want to place women right back to those “good old days.” I for one, being a father to a daughter, I am doing all I can to give her a better future where she maintains her consent and autonomy. I’ll be writing another article about misogyny alone, because there is plenty to speak about that.
But for this article, my point is that prejudice – to include misogyny is a consequence of power over others and exploiting biases in order to perpetuate this nefarious cycle.
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Framing this article
When I was thinking about how to approach this topic for the article you’re reading – I was not sure how to approach it. Low-hanging fruit to talk about it would be the exceedingly racist comments from Republican Vice President candidate J. D. Vance who propped this false narrative that Haitians were eating pets in Ohio. Of course, it got a lot worse as Trump himself repeated that very line during the last presidential debate.
Although it is funny on the ridiculousness of this false assertion, it is actually a very serious and dangerous matter – in the sense that lots of morons believed it and the violence followed because of it. There were more than 30 bomb threats in Ohio, they had to close the schools, and Haitians were afraid for their lives. And of course, these very Haitians were residing legally in the USA and were there because the city invited them to accept some job positions that the locality needed to fulfill.
This whole thing started because a lady thought that her cat was kidnapped by a family from Haiti and accused them of eating the cat. By the way, the aforementioned cat RETURNED home – alive… on his own… like many f**ing cats do from time to time. She apologized to the family she falsely accused of eating the cats, but the damage is done across the country.
In the last few days, I’ve had to debunk that to a lot of people in social media about it, and to make it more insidious they were referring to Haitians as Asians – saying that it is normal in their cultures to eat pets in their countries. And further, they were [erroneously] asserting that if they eat pets in their country (referring to Asians – or people from Asia and confusing them with Haitians). And yes, they felt offended when I pointed to them that they were wrong about it.
Unsurprising to some, all of these folks just so happen to be MAGA and were repeating Trump’s and Vance’s points. And Trump even went as far as to tell his followers that he would deport all the Haitians involved and send them to Venezuela. The exceeding racism implied should be bad enough, but does Trump realize that Haiti and Venezuela are two different countries?
For example (I’m not saying this is happening but want to show the ridicules of Trump’s words), let’s say that a dude from somewhere in Mississippi was living in Japan, and gets arbitrarily deported by the Japanese government to a totally unrelated country like Madagascar instead of the United States. Yes, now just change the countries from Haiti, to USA, and Venezuela. That’s what Trump did… did he realize that? Or is he too dense to understand basic geography? Spoiler alert, geography is very important for the presidency.
It is very important to understand the distinction between accountability and prejudice. I am all for accountability, but there has to be an actual level of evidence – further, this accountability must happen regardless of skin color, gender, or any other factor that could be exploited for divisive rhetoric. This conversation is by no means over, and in future articles I’ll be talking more about these important topics. These grown-up conversations are obviously overdue.
Let me end this article by saying that we are more similar than different. Authoritarian propagandists want us to be divided and afraid. If a leader is “impressed” by another authoritarian whose people are afraid of him, or quote “stand at attention” every time this person shows up (Listen to Trump’s recent remarks regarding his devotion for Kim Jong Un from North Korea), look it up… as usual, I don’t want you to take my words on face value alone. Everything I tell you in these articles can be demonstrated.
But most importantly, my goal is to unify us as a country and as people who care about one another. When we embrace our diversity, not just in relation to different skin tones and demographics – but as a diversity of ideas – then the blind spots diminish dramatically, because where we cannot see, somebody else who has our back is able to watch out for our collective well-being. That is very inconvenient for anyone who wants to control you.
That is why I framed the thought exercise several paragraphs above the way I did. Hate and subjugation is a vicious circle that only expands further hate and discontent – that is why you see a lot of a dog-eat-dog (pun intended) on authoritarian constructs. The power struggle to gain the “dear leader’s attention” becomes fierce, and backstabbing is quite common. Looking out for each other makes us all stronger… dividing us only makes the higher echelons stronger at expense of us.
Don’t forget that it is easy to fall for prejudice. In a way, it has been normalized for so many people as a fact of life. We are not responsible for what past generations have done, but we are very much responsible for the decisions we make today. It is definitely justified to argue about ideas, attacking the issue, but it is never fine to attack somebody for the sake of attacking them. Pointing out a flaw that could affect the collective is very different than prejudice. I know my readers understand this, but sadly a lot of people out there don’t. But we can educate those who are confused – together. HLC