A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on July 7th, 2009 in General

It’s all semantics, honestly. The difference between “prejudice” and “bias” is only in intensity. The difference between racism and stereotyping is fairly slight. Which is which is fairly subjective, and thus depends on which side of the judgment someone is on.

Bias is derived from French and means, roughly, “slanted.” Generally speaking, it is having some general feeling towards or against a subject – whether it is person or food or what have you. No one – white, black, or otherwise – can get through life without having biases. One of the first things I teach students about social research is to be aware of their own biases. It’s something that sneaks into everything we do – even how we define what we are doing.

Prejudice is derived from Latin and means “pre-judged.” Like bias, it is a general feeling about something or someone, but it is usually taken to mean a specifically negative attitude towards the subject. In general, a prejudice is thought of as not having any basis in fact – though the human mind can always twist evidence around and justify just about anything.

A stereotype is an expectation of behavior based on some class membership. They can be negative or positive. Racism is a specific example of stereotyping that contributes negative behaviors to inherent group characteristics. Like biases, we could not function without stereotypes – we generally use them without even thinking. To the extent that groups exist in our minds, we create (or adopt) stereotypes to describe what sets them apart. Stereotypes, by the way, are not necessarily bad things. They can just as easily be positive.

I wouldn’t say that your example of the slow driver is an example of prejudice. It seems more like an example of stereotyping. It may or may not rise to the level of racism – I honestly can’t tell from this small example. If it is, then it’s at the lower end of the scale. When I get stuck behind a slow driver, I just get irritated because they’re slow – I don’t think at all if they are Asian or Hispanic or what not. So, I would ask you this: Why consider the group characteristics of the driver at all?

Originally posted as a comment by ThurmanHart on The Moderate Voice Discussion Forum using Disqus.

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