Got a bitterly amusing voice mail last night. It was forwarded to me as an MP3 file by Rich Lucibella, publisher of S.W.A.T. magazine (for which, oddly enough, I write; Rich and editor Denny Hansen are terrific people).

Anyhow, my latest S.W.A.T. article is called “Proudly Redneck.” It points out that in this veddy, veddy PC age, the one group it’s still socially acceptable to stereotype is “rednecks” — crackers, rubes, hayseeds. You know, us country folk.

The article opens with eight bad old racial or ethnic slurs that no polite person uses these days and goes on to ask why, if those words make us cringe, “redneck” is any less cringeworthy.

Well … this voice mail claimed to be from a Chicago cop — the real deal (he went out of his way to note), not some poseur running around merely playing SWAT guy. He said he was African-American and a long-time faithful reader of the magazine.

AND, he said, that article was the most offensive thing he’d ever read. And he was going to throw the magazine into a garbage can. And he was never, ever again in his entire life going to read one word in S.W.A.T. Not ever.

“Why?” you might ask?

Because some rednecks, at some time murdered some black people.

In other words — all rednecks are all alike. They deserve to be sneeringly stereotyped, even when other groups are treated as individuals. Solely because of the actions (mostly long past actions, at that) of a few.

Yeah. Right.

The man who created that voice mail is a bigot, pure and simple. Of course, he’d deny his bigotry. He’d say, I’m sure, that he’s opposed to bigotry — that in fact, he reacted so strongly to the article because the magazine and I wrongly defended bigots.

He’s too bigoted to see those hated “rednecks” as individuals. They’re all guilty of crimes committed by a dreadful few.

In what way is that different than whites hating all blacks because some blacks commit carjackings?

—–

Another example: I lived in Wyoming when Matthew Shepard was murdered and his killers put on trial.

The murderers faced the death penalty and eventually plea-bargained their way to life sentences. (Correction: They made deals that resulted in multiple life sentences.)

But that was not enough for some people. You see, the Wyoming legislature would not (and as far as I know, never did) pass a law making Shepard’s murder a hate crime. So people from all over the country wrote furious letters to the statewide paper, the Casper Star-Tribune.

Many of these letters didn’t just damn the Wyoming courts or government, or even the nasty killer creeps. Quite often, the writers hissed that every, single person in Wyoming was an ignorant, hate-filled moron.

I specifically remember one of these loathing-loaded letters because it came from a college professor in Birmingham, Alabama.

Oh, the irony!

Anybody who is old enough to remember the civil rights movement will recall Birmingham with chills. The memory of Sheriff Bull Connor and his minions turning fire hoses, attack dogs, and even a tank against non-violent protesters forever sears the brain. Talk about hate-filled moronity!

Of course, it’s completely nuts to blame every citizen of Birmingham, past or present, for the outrages committed by Bull Connor.

But it’s pretty darned nuts for somebody from Birmingham to damn every, single human being in Wyoming — and remain arrogantly unconscious of the mud that could be slung in his own direction, simply using his own standards against him.

—–

One of the most useful distinctions anybody ever taught me was the distinction between prejudice and bigotry.

Prejudice, we all have. It’s an emotional reaction. An assumption or a set of assumptions that may be based on experience or inexperience. That group of guys standing outside the pool hall looks dangerous to us. Even though we’ve never tried them, we’re sure we’re going to hate artichokes. We dislike frilly pink things. We think Japanese people are going to be “different than us.” Guns are scary.

Bigotry is prejudice that won’t yield to reason. Bigotry is blindness. In fact, bigotry is choosing blindness over sight. Bigotry is … well, it’s when all rednecks, or all blacks or all whatever are guilty of the actions of a few. Bigotry is when guns are not only scary, but evil. Bigotry is when you not only believe in global warming or the war on terror, but you think that anybody who disagrees with you should be locked up for treason. Bigotry is when you’re an atheist who thinks all Christians are benighted idiots. And bigotry is when you’re a Christian who smugly “knows” that your God will send every one of those atheists screaming into hell while you sit up in heaven, smiling.

Bigotry is when you’re a redneck who hates all black people. And bigotry is when you’re a black person who hates all rednecks and thinks they deserve to be stereotyped when your own group should not. No difference between the two. Not one iota.

Of course, if you’re smart, you already know that. It’s amazing, though, how easy it is to see others’ bigotry and miss our own.

Bottom line: We’re never going to have freedom until we’re ready to treat individuals as individuals, to take each person and thing on its own merits.

Freedom is about individual rights, individual deeds, individual integrity, individual responsibility. It’s not about group identity. Freedom has no room to move when we cling to unjust concepts about others and refuse to let them go.

Nothing wrong with prejudice — pre-judging — as long as we’re able to give it up the moment we learn that our judgments are incorrect. But where there’s bigotry, there ain’t no freedom. Never will be.

Share or Bookmark