Bigotry is Learned Behavior, Not Innate
Photograph Source: Evan Nesterak – CC BY 2.0
Nicholas Ensley Mitchell, a professor of curriculum studies at the University of Kansas begins his book On Bigotry: Twenty Lessons on How Bigotry Works and What to Do About It with an anecdote about an LSU football game he attended while he was a student there. The game, which took place not long after Hurricane Katrina and the blatant racism of the police, the media and the US government in its treatment of Black residents whose lives were overturned by the catastrophe. Mitchell describes hanging out with a few friends before the game tailgating. A group of Black students marched through the streets holding signs and chanting for the removal of the confederate flag as a school symbol. Several protesting students attended the game, one assumes they were few in number in relation to the tens of thousands of white fans, many who were wearing or otherwise showing their confederate flag colors. After the game, which LSU won, Mitchell and his friend Jackson (who was white) slowly realized that the tone of the crowd was turning ugly and Mitchell’s skin made him a target. They sought and found shelter with a female student who lived nearby. As he writes: he “survived the night.”
Mitchell’s self-assigned task in this book is to expose the ways of bigots. In doing so, he focuses on group and individual manifestations of bigotry, while recognizing that a society established by bigots will reflect and strengthen the founding bigotry in its economic political spheres. In other words, he discusses bigotry as it exists between people and how individuals become bigots and often go on to champion it. It’s a consideration of bigotry in all of its forms: racial, gender, sexuality, religious and ethnic. Although the most obvious (and also the most popular) forms of bigotry in the United States and many other nations of the so-called West are white bigotry against non-whites, especially Black people; and bigotry against gay and trans people, Mitchell broadens his conversation to include several other manifestations of bigotry, including anti-white bigotry. Simply stated, bigotry is hatred for another person or group based on learned hatred—a hatred often encouraged by a society that believes it benefits from it.
That being said, the bulk of this text is about the most common form of bigotry in the modern United States: the race hatred perpetuated by white people against black people. It’s about a society and economy built on the perpetuation of that hatred and its incorporation into the culture of so many members of that society. As Mitchell explains, bigotry is paranoid and violent; presents itself as a philosophy and a science; is taught in homes and the media and is based in falsehoods and fake premises. It takes people’s fears and pretends it is concerned about them. As is apparent in the lawsuits and statements from various Trump officials claiming official bigotry against white men, bigots want the world to see them as the victims and hope others will join them in their grievance. Ultimately, bigotry is cruel and depends on cruelty to maintain itself.
Mitchell continues, addressing the resurgence of overt white supremacy when discussing the laws being passed against “woke” curriculum and DEI policies. He goes even further when he writes: “White supremacy is as old as the country is, and White supremacists have been consistent in their belief: White people are superior on the earth and everyone else is subhuman, deserving of no rights or consideration as human beings.” (73) He continues, claiming that white supremacy is beholden to no particular political ideology of the West; there are right wing, left wing and centrists who are informed by a belief that expresses the sentences quoted above. I was reminded of the words of Black freedom fighter Robert F. Williams whose work and collaboration with various white leftists in the US and Europe led him to the same conclusion. I might add that there are those (mostly on the left side of this spectrum) who challenge these particular precepts their philosophy is based in, but when one examines the original basis of said philosophies, they will discover the essential truth of Mitchell’s statement. Of course, it is the right wing that is the most vocal and determined to bring back the most reactionary and overtly racist elements of this supremacist philosophy. Arguing that there can be no compromise with bigots, the author describes such compromise as the beginning of a so-called slippery slope—a slope those who live in the United States are experiencing in real time today.
Incorporating testimony from the Nuremburg Trials, Merriam-Webster, the Florida Department of Education and the National Park Service along with countless other sources, Mitchell has composed an incredibly useful and very approachable text that challenges the current attacks on anti-racist scholarship. In doing so, he also challenges each and every reader’s potential bigotry and unaddressed prejudices. On Bigotry is a challenge to white supremacists and their philosophy of hate; it is also a beginner’s manual in how to remove this and other manifestations of bigotry from our individual selves and society at large. It is an endeavor that needs to be undertaken immediately, even if the current regime has outlawed it. Indeed, especially if the current regime (and those succeeding it) has outlawed it.
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