An interesting talk on bigotry, fear and the cost to individuals and society. And, yes....we are likely all bigots (or have been) in some aspects of, or at some times in our lives.

WHAT PRICE BIGOTRY?
Undermining the rich foundations of humanity
Dorothy McRae-McMahon

Excerps:

Of course, bigotry is always present in all of us to some degree…. When respectable people give the nod to racism, it gives permissions for what is hidden and regarded as unacceptable to gain respectability and it gives life to the deathly impulses of extremists.

We are now facing the consequences of many forms of injustice, hate, colonialism, religious and racial hatreds and prejudice - partly the terrifying fruits of world history and partly the fruits of bigotries which arise from economic, religious and political fundamentalisms, the ultimate sources of bigotry in our day.

Fear of difference is, I guess, age-old. It is as though the existence of difference is, in itself, a negative comment on our being and lifestyle and thus an attack on us.

I began to look at these people more closely – not those whose who simply disagreed but those whom I would class as almost certainly homophobic. By definition, they were, of course, responding with fear.

Who can tell what lies beneath that fear? I would never presume to determine what lies there – fear of sexuality in general or in particular? Issues around bodiliness overall, perhaps?

Suffice to say that I wish, among other things, that we had taken to ourselves the healthy and integrated view of human being of the Jewish people, rather than the dualism of the Greek thinking of the day. Not that this implies that any of the great religions set an example of acceptance of difference in sexual preference, but at least in the Jewish tradition as I understand it, body, mind, heart and souls are not arranged in order of worth but are held together as the nature of wholeness.

Of course, there is a natural human impulse to be anxious in the presence of the unpredictable. We like others to fit into what we regard as our norms of response, life-style and behaviour as that feels much more comfortable....

What are the consequences of bigotry?



http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/freilich/events/archive/WHAT%20PRICE%20BIGOTRY.pdf