Rhymes With Spigotry

Well, rats. The plan was to cut and paste a definition of “bigotry” from a dictionary here and to urge readers to keep that in mind in this highly politicized year. I had thought Merriam-Webster would do. However, that dictionary has decided to take a pass.

“Bigotry,” according to Webster, is a) “the state of mind of a bigot” or b) “acts or beliefs characteristic of a bigot.” Great, so who’s a bigot?

The dictionary is slightly more helpful there. A bigot is defined as “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.”

As definitions go, that’s still too loosey-goosey, yet it gets us closer to the point of this post. And that is this: bigotry has more to do with the way we believe things than the content of those beliefs. We all have a lifetime of accumulated prejudices but those notions do not, usually, descend to the level of bigotry.

Partisans have started using the word bigotry to describe political opponents on pretty thin evidence, when they bother with evidence. They use the word because most of us will feel it necessary to deny the charge.

We will deny the charge because bigotry is an awful condition. It is a potent mix of ignorance and pride, a setting of one’s mind against all evidence and reason, a complete lack of respect for the experience of others.

Many anti-bigots seem to think that the remedy for bigotry is submission. Everybody should change their opinions to conform to those of the critic, who is — at least for the purposes of this expiational exercise — without sin.

That seems to me exactly the wrong way to approach the problem. It’s likely to produce a lot of people who are both smug and bigoted, just about different things.

Since bigotry is primarily about how we believe, its real remedy is humility. Best of luck promoting that one in an election year.