Strange and fascinating. This bit struck me as well worth putting here:

"I thought about why we develop our prejudices.

Mine were never about race so much. When I was younger, I denigrated people (in my mind) to protect my own sense of uniqueness. If someone did better in school, then they had to be worse at something else. If they were funnier or better liked or more athletic, they were shallow.

This defensive scorn was aimed mostly at individuals, but typecasts coalesced.

By college, my deepest prejudice was for "frat boys," which said a lot more about my defects than theirs.

Racism probably derived from the same impulse. Yet instead of flickering in solitude, it's fire ran wild, fueled by family, friends and co-workers, by demagoguery, economics and bloody history."