With current events so reminiscent of the unrest of the citizenry over civil rights and the Vietnam War from the days of my youth, I am able to apply experience that young people cannot have with a youthful immaturity that I refuse to relinquish. What that means is that I have been able to adapt my thinking to retain the messages that were given to us in music like For What It's Worth, rather than to become a person of whom young people need to beware.
However, it seems I have both friends and relatives worthy of being despised by young people. They've gone from being the spat upon to being those who spit upon the young people who are quite aware of what they're going through as they try to change their worlds.
People can change their beliefs, so I don't want to put any names with any of these descriptions. The first thing I can do is eliminate everyone from my friends' list who is supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is important at this point to realize that some Black people might remain. I am not personally friends with anyone like Ben Carson, Clarence Thomas, or Candace Owens, but they also do not qualify as "Black" by something like 99-1, according to Black people.
When I talk about supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, it cannot be something somebody equates to support, like "I'm not against it" or "I used to support it." I am talking about supporting Black Lives Matter in both word and deed. In binary, if something isn't "1", it is "0" regardless of how close to "1" that "0" is.
When you apply that factor to everyone in your friends' list, anyone who does not have a factor of "1" on supporting Black Lives Matter, may be white supremacists, but they may also be only racists, or be merely prejudiced. This is how to judge them by the content of their character regardless of the color of their skin that will most likely lack melanin, but not always.
White Supremacists
People who possess things like Confederate flags or Nazi symbols like swastikas and iron crosses are white supremacists. It doesn't matter whether the symbol is displayed as a tattoo on the forehead, or kept hidden in a closet in boxes, the mere possession of symbols of white supremacy makes a person as much of a white supremacist as one who would don the hood of a Klansman.
White supremacists are the radical right-wing factions that amass weapons under the premises that the government cannot be trusted and needs to be overthrown, and that those who try to make the government trustworthy for Black people are changing what America has always stood for. What they have in common with one another mostly, though, is the thought that they, as white people, have greater rights than other people under the erroneous belief that white people are genetically superior beings to people of other races.
Only Racists
Most people are not white supremacists. However, there may be a majority of white supremacists within any designated geographical area. What this means when you subtract those areas where white supremacy is in the majority, it increases the likelihood that those who do not support Black Lives Matter are only racists.
Racists are different than white supremacists in that they are not active participants in things like misguided militias that want to overthrow the government. In fact, racists are often those who most vocally support the government and hail its systemic racism through nationalistic pride.
The people who are only racists are the people who think them exercising their first amendment rights to protest people who exercise their first amendment rights to protest systemic racism are equal protests. They excuse themselves from hypocrisy because, even if they do say something ridiculous, the reader is to know that they meant something that made sense. They are the people who call the cops on suspicious people, and they regard everyone who doesn't look like them to be suspicious.
People who speak for dead soldiers, people who know what the founding fathers meant when they all agreed upon everything, and people who put ceremony ahead of the Constitution are likely only racists, as are people who think "I disagree" is an opinion.
Merely Prejudiced
Though a small minority of people who do not support Black Lives Matter are white supremacists, and a larger number of people are only racists, it seems to me that the majority of people who do not support Black Lives Matter are merely prejudiced and are neither white supremacists nor only racists.
One of the most common prejudices I read and hear is that they aren't interested in politics. It seems disingenuous when someone is interested enough in politics to mention their disinterest in the topic, but often the claim of disinterest in politics is followed with a dissertation about how the world would be better if everybody was only interested enough in politics to talk about their disinterest of the subject.
Other people who are merely prejudiced are those who claim to have friends on both sides of the argument, and that they don't support one group over the other, which is, itself, an act of supporting one group over the other. They confuse not speaking up with neutrality rather than the silent complicity it truly is. They often claim that they would definitely fight for their Black friends, but they don't want to upset the friends they have who they would have to fight if the first part of the statement were true.
Perhaps the largest and most tragic segment of people in this group are the people who are merely prejudiced to keep peace in the home rather than to confront people in their lives who either are white supremacists or only racists. These people who are merely prejudiced are good people at heart, but they are in difficult situations that pit their senses of fairness against their desires for peace in their personal lives.
Using the Scales for Self-Evaluation
One of the biggest obstacles to self-evaluation is that people tend to either excuse themselves from the measurements for reasons only they can explain, which they often will, or they tend to be overly critical of themselves.
Of course, that is also the biggest problem to evaluating others on these scales. We tend to excuse others who fall into these categories for reasons they will explain, or we tend to be overly critical of others who do not believe as we do. Usually, the difference between excusing and being overly critical of others is whether we know them and whether they are our friends.
Perhaps the best thing we can do if we notice that about ourselves, is to consider whether or not we are in that large and tragic group of people who are merely prejudiced to keep peace in our lives rather than to confront friends and relatives over our senses of fairness.
When I talk about supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, it cannot be something somebody equates to support, like "I'm not against it" or "I used to support it." I am talking about supporting Black Lives Matter in both word and deed. In binary, if something isn't "1", it is "0" regardless of how close to "1" that "0" is.
When you apply that factor to everyone in your friends' list, anyone who does not have a factor of "1" on supporting Black Lives Matter, may be white supremacists, but they may also be only racists, or be merely prejudiced. This is how to judge them by the content of their character regardless of the color of their skin that will most likely lack melanin, but not always.
White Supremacists
White supremacists are the radical right-wing factions that amass weapons under the premises that the government cannot be trusted and needs to be overthrown, and that those who try to make the government trustworthy for Black people are changing what America has always stood for. What they have in common with one another mostly, though, is the thought that they, as white people, have greater rights than other people under the erroneous belief that white people are genetically superior beings to people of other races.
Only Racists
Racists are different than white supremacists in that they are not active participants in things like misguided militias that want to overthrow the government. In fact, racists are often those who most vocally support the government and hail its systemic racism through nationalistic pride.
The people who are only racists are the people who think them exercising their first amendment rights to protest people who exercise their first amendment rights to protest systemic racism are equal protests. They excuse themselves from hypocrisy because, even if they do say something ridiculous, the reader is to know that they meant something that made sense. They are the people who call the cops on suspicious people, and they regard everyone who doesn't look like them to be suspicious.
People who speak for dead soldiers, people who know what the founding fathers meant when they all agreed upon everything, and people who put ceremony ahead of the Constitution are likely only racists, as are people who think "I disagree" is an opinion.
Merely Prejudiced
One of the most common prejudices I read and hear is that they aren't interested in politics. It seems disingenuous when someone is interested enough in politics to mention their disinterest in the topic, but often the claim of disinterest in politics is followed with a dissertation about how the world would be better if everybody was only interested enough in politics to talk about their disinterest of the subject.
Other people who are merely prejudiced are those who claim to have friends on both sides of the argument, and that they don't support one group over the other, which is, itself, an act of supporting one group over the other. They confuse not speaking up with neutrality rather than the silent complicity it truly is. They often claim that they would definitely fight for their Black friends, but they don't want to upset the friends they have who they would have to fight if the first part of the statement were true.
Perhaps the largest and most tragic segment of people in this group are the people who are merely prejudiced to keep peace in the home rather than to confront people in their lives who either are white supremacists or only racists. These people who are merely prejudiced are good people at heart, but they are in difficult situations that pit their senses of fairness against their desires for peace in their personal lives.Using the Scales for Self-Evaluation
One of the biggest obstacles to self-evaluation is that people tend to either excuse themselves from the measurements for reasons only they can explain, which they often will, or they tend to be overly critical of themselves.
Of course, that is also the biggest problem to evaluating others on these scales. We tend to excuse others who fall into these categories for reasons they will explain, or we tend to be overly critical of others who do not believe as we do. Usually, the difference between excusing and being overly critical of others is whether we know them and whether they are our friends.
Perhaps the best thing we can do if we notice that about ourselves, is to consider whether or not we are in that large and tragic group of people who are merely prejudiced to keep peace in our lives rather than to confront friends and relatives over our senses of fairness.
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