Ebbie, maybe it's a Sagittarius thing, but I was going to post a comment about blind people and prejudice.

It seems to me that it's very simplistic to think that just because a person can't see the physical clues that help sighted people categorize people by race, that person could not be prejudiced against or for a particular race or races.

While physical clues are part of how people are socialized to categorize people into racial and ethnic* categories, there are other ideas, attitudes, and stereotypes that people associate with particular racial groups. A person doesn't rise above the stereotypes about race just because he or she can't see skin colors.

* In the context of this sentence, by "ethnic" I mean the USA population group of Latinos.

**

Another cultural descriptor that hasn't yet been mentioned in this discussion is gender orientation. I'm a heterosexual female who has a few gay and lesbian acquaintances. Perhaps I also have some gay and lesbian friends who I don't know. I certainly have gay family members, but rarely talk about this topic with them {their choice}.

It certainly seems to be little doubt that gender orientation has a powerful influence on a person's self-esteem, and attitudes toward life and attitudes toward other people. While I believe that it would be erroneous to talk about "a gay lifestyle" as if there is only one gay lifestyle, it does seem to me that there are cultural mores that could be considered part of some gay lifestyles. I suppose that some gay sub-sets have their own languages and folk heroes, and music preferences, and dance styles etc etc etc. I just don't know very much about these types of cultural lifestyles.

But from what I've observed, and read, and from what I've been told, although homosexual and transgendered people have some things in common regardless of their race, racial prejudice can still exist in this population.

Comments?