Necessary Roughness

I saw this article, “We Must Fight To Stop Prejudice” (link dead), in the Newark (Ohio) Advocate, and as far as I can tell, this person is mad because someone is flying the Confederate Battle Flag in their vicinity. While the link between the Battle Flag and racism is debatable, there are certain points that need to be made about prejudice in response to Mr. Day’s letter and in general.

Prejudice is all around us, even if we try to ignore it. Prejudice against blacks, Jews and any other type of prejudice is just plain wrong.

Prejudice is an adverse judgment formed without knowledge of the facts. We do this everyday, just to get through our day. In order for me to choose between routes to the babysitter, I either have to:

1. form prejudices about the routes,
2. call people along the routes to gather information, or
3. run the routes myself and then choose which route I wish to run.

The last two options are quite inefficient. I have to guess which route is going to be the fastest, and then go. It’s possible I could be very wrong; the normally fastest route may have an accident. Because I was prejudiced against the other routes, I would be delayed. The cost of gathering this information, though, is only affordable if the normal traffic route is blocked. This is just one choice we make during a day; how many choices do we make without gathering all the facts? Our lives would slow to a crawl.

The word prejudice has been co-opted to mean another word, racism. Conceptually, I think we can find some common ground that the color of one’s skin shouldn’t play into a decision unless one is dealing with makeup, something half of us thankfully don’t have to worry about. If someone is forming opinions like “whites won’t work for sub-minimum wage” or “Jews are stingy” or whatnot, that person is ignorant and needs to increase their sample set of information, lest they make an incorrect decision. If I had the opportunity to hire George Washington Carver, and I failed to do so because of the color of his skin, I’d not only be ignorant, I’d be poorer, probably much poorer, than if I had ascertained the value of his inventions and marketed them appropriately. This penalty I would incur for being racist would far exceed any reparations that could get passed through Congress today.

This is how racism is fought, by providing everyone with equal treatment under law and equal access to the marketplace of ideas. I avoid the term “equal opportunity” because some people read that to mean having to equalize everyone financially from the start. One more jewel:

All I am saying is that there could truly be peace on Earth if only everyone stopped the prejudice.

Racism is the only cause of war on Earth? To say nothing of the American Revolution, the storming of the Bastille, or the military advances of Communism? I would advise the author try to live under that brand of equality.

I’m left to assume in the article that the answer to his predicament is to force people to remove the flags from their yards. This has been attempted, but the flag in question is not the Confederate Battle Flag, but our very own Stars and Stripes or the flag of the U.S. Marine Corps. While those may have some basis of law in idiot deed restrictions that the owners agreed to in the first place, I wonder if the author would turn the argument on himself and see whether he’d like the government to come and take any paraphernalia that a neighbor complains about.