• sandbox@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    There are plenty of highly-educated, highly intelligent bigots. Likewise, there are plenty of people with almost no education to speak of who are opposed to bigotry. Bigotry isn’t about education or intelligence, it’s far more insidious and rooted in our psychology. A lot of it is subconscious - we all have innate in-group bias, for example.

    All of us are susceptible to bigotry, and the best way to prevent it is to be aware that you’re not immune to it and check whether your knee-jerk reactions are justified or not.

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      i should say educated in related issues. it’s demonstrable that even simple exposure to different kinds of people reduces bigotry.

      people who are bigoted can be educated, of course, but most likely they won’t really know much about the people they’re bigoted against, even when they dedicate their life to thinking about them.

      transphobes for example, barely think about anything other than trans people all day. they start transvestigating cis people as we’ve seen here.

      I’m also not trying to suggest being uneducated automatically makes you a bigot either. some obvious hyperbole has been used.