I think this is rather profound.

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Being transgender is not a choice, but being a bigot is a choice.

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The bad news is ...

... bigotry is =taught=.

So the good news is that bigotry can be un-learned.

Problem is, un-learning an Incorrect Thing can take more effort and time, than it did to learn the I. T. in the first place.
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Teachers in many areas have noted that it is easier to teach a novice, than it is to teach someone who has been self- or wrongly-taught. The first part of the teaching has to dismantle the incorrect stuff.
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I worked with a man who was from the USA, and in the US Air Force.

During his first trip to Germany, he noticed a mixed-race couple ... and =nobody= was showing any reaction.
He was smart enough to know he had to revise his wrong opinions ... and wise enough to know there doubtless other things he needed to clean up.
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In the USA, 50-60 or more yeas ago, a black man with a white woman would have gotten the black man worse than lynched.

On the subject of 'The bad news is....'

Columbine's picture

Not sure about the US airman revising his bad opinions. I think it would be more likely that he wouldn't express them until he was in an environment where he felt comfortable to express them. Also I am not clear about what can be worse than lynching. Judicial execution is bad enough, extra-judicial execution is much worse, but the ending of someone's life by force however it is carried out is final. What can be worse?

I think I knew the Airman well enough, that he ...

... had genuinely revised his opinions; and was not hiding the 'bad ones' until got back into 'bigot space'.

He also told me of addressing one of his groups with "Ladies and Gentlemen and Undecided". The Undecided person was genetically 'split' so evenly that not even they had 'picked a side'.
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"worse than lynching" ... tortured first, then lynched.

The USA has an unbelievably beyond =UGLY= history of racism and the associated violence.
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Was gonna post a link or two ... I just don't have the heart-soul-stomach to do so.
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Yes, I am a USA citizen ...

Better never taught than taught wrong

... that it is easier to teach a novice, than it is to teach someone who has been self- or wrongly-taught.

For a while, in order to not be totally unemployed, I was teaching remedial math at a college level. The hardest problem was getting the students to abandon all the wrong stuff they had mis-learned in their years of schooling. My impression is that a lot of primary and secondary school math teachers don't actually understand math themselves (describes some of my math teachers), so their teaching confuses their students. I always felt I would have had a much easier time if they had never been taught any math in the first place.

Mixed marriage

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

In many states it was illegal. I remember watching "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" in the late 60s. In that movie, a very liberal white couple who supported the black rights movement got a surprise when their daughter came home from Hawaii with her fiancé; a black man. All of a sudden we saw just how thin the veneer of their liberal beliefs was. Even the black man's parents weren't happy that he planned to marry a white woman.

The girl's father tells her, "In seven states your marriage will be illegal." (I may have misremembered the number of states.)

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann

It isn't a choice

Patricia Marie Allen's picture

I can't believe that any of us decided to be maligned, shunned, bullied, disowned, disinherited, and risk being beaten because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

There's a reason so many of us stay in the closet for six or seventy years or more; some even never come out.

Hugs
Patricia

Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann