On a much lesser scale, I've encountered this recently in friends of mine. These are young people my age, who have biases that I suspected they didn't even eralise was there. One of them had a problem with West Africans - he said, "When a person who looks like that (really dark black skin) walks into the room, I just get very tense, nervous and uncomfortable." He knew there was a problem with this feeling, but he kept on with it anyway. I gently pointed out to him that this wasn't open-minded, and it wasn't the way he wanted to be- and he knew it. I didn't say, "You're a bad person," I said, "You have some flawed beliefs." I took the same approach with friends who don't THINK they are homophobes, but have incomplete or flawed assuptions on the subject. I didn't want to rag them about it, or come down hard enough to make them defensive, just to point out that their opinions weren't quite (in terms of bias) what they thought they were, and that they were in fact saying things that were racist or homophobic whether or not they realised it. If it continues, I'll come down harder, but I started out just trying to make them think. These are people who honestly thought of themselves are not biased at all - but they are in ways they can't recognise. I tried to point the way for that recognition.

BNP members, on the other hand, are quite clear on whether or not they have biases, I'm quite sure. There are some political disagreements with my friends that I just don't touch- the abortion issue, for instance. But I'm not sure I could handle racism of that caliber being discussed around me. At the very least I would ask them not to use those terms around me, or to say derogatory things, just as I ask people not to use the word 'slut' around me. I hate the word, I don't want to hear it. It's not solving the problem, but eventually they'll start wondering, if it makes you so uncomfortable and unhappy to hear these things, if there might be something wrong with them.

Well, one can hope.

-J