Scapegoating involves coming up with a group of negative characteristics, either true or false, to justify the harsh action taken against the targeted group. In the case of Nazi Germany, Jewish people were characterized as shifty, disloyal, arrogant, covetous, and avaricious, amongst other unpleasant terms, and that these traits needed to be expunged from the Volk.
Were there Jewish people who exhibited those characteristics? Of course, there are people like that of every background. However, there were just as many who never displayed those traits, and instead were giving, selfless individuals who worked tirelessly to make the world around them a better place. However, when a worldwide depression's going on, and someone's looking for another person to blame, they're not necessarily going to stop for the sake of those people. That's why scapegoating is the way it is.
Of course not, it's the only way we have time to make many snap judgments that are necessary to survival. But it is inherently dangerous, and when it goes wrong, the effects have been catastrophic.
However, we simply don't have enough time to get to know everyone well enough to constantly put aside these biases. Is the person who says "I'm not racist, one of my best friends is black... but he's one of the good ones" truly not racist?
I understand what you're saying, and yes, I grow frustrated with the social issues that go along with categorization. However, they're there for a reason, which is that when times are bad, simple generalization turns into scapegoating. When talking about people, we may be able to discuss it dispassionately, but that doesn't mean that the emotional response to the subject is dispassionate at all. Humans aren't rational beings, but emotional ones... and that's where the danger in categorization comes from.
Long post, with a lot of good stuff within, I'm at work and the missus will be waking soon, so my apologies for the hurried reply.
Question: If making social generalizations is potentially catastrophically dangerous, as history has shown us it has been, what would you propose we should do to change this fact/pattern?
I'll make a generalization!
Most people are stupid, in that they don't think for themselves, they don't utilize critical thinking, and this, m'dear, leads to the varied and continuous maladies/tragedies that befall us human beings, past, present and surely in the future to come, sadly.
Now, if you accept the above generalization, there are three types of folks who will "sway" either implicitly or explicitly the masses, one type being the selfish, power hungry, sociopaths, who believe human beings are pawns, they gain, you lose, me, me, me, me, me types.
And then there will be your altruists, who see humanity as a whole, who think when the individual suffers the community suffers, when the community is healthy the individual will be healthy.
And then there's your third type, the reclusive intellectual, they might be writers, poets, painters, scientists, but they create works of art and, or workable systems/theories that eventually benefit mankind tremendously.
^There's more, I'm sure, but those are the three that come to mind.
"I'm not racist, one of my best friends is black... but he's one of the good ones"
^ Um, that is not only racist but retarded, why?
Because he's implying that black people are inherently bad, that is the stupidest generalization I've ever heard regarding a race, televangelists are bad, that not only makes sense, but it's true.
Televangelists exploit people who are suffering and who are poor as fuck yet gladly and greedily take their "offerings"
Race is such a touchy issue.
Which sucks, I wish we could be more mature about it, why can we classify, delineate and describe other animals yet, due to our fragile egos, we, even the fucking science community refuse to classify and regard human beings like the rest of the animals they study.
It's not wrong for me to say that East Asians tend to be shorter than average, but if I say they
tend to score better on IQ tests and excel in math and sciences, I'm a racist asshole.
People are people, and in my world, a lot of people of all types and races are pretty much the same, as in they're average.
Exceptional people come in ALL RACES, but they are few and far between.
But why get so butt-hurt when we make observations regarding people of different races?
Fuck, we even get butt-hurt when we make generalizations about men and women.
THEY ARE JUST GENERALIZATIONS!!!
You're the asshole if your generalizations are blindly accepted rather than fortified via personal experience, research, and observation.
And...
You're the asshole if you jump to conclusions about someone without KNOWING THEM simply because of their race.
As I said before, the individual always takes precedence and trumps any generalizations, positive or negative.
Why can we discuss different dog breeds, and their characteristics yet for some reason we now have to accept, because it's so PC, that all people are the same, I am pro-individualism, all people are human beings, but not all human beings are the same, similar, yes, but we are all far from being the same.
We, each of us, even monozygotic twins, are individuals.
/end rant
