Thread Drift

[PamNY]

On a completely different note ... I had a little epiphany this morning about my own reactions to some things, triggered by the graffiti thread. I realized that I get cranked at any kind of "other-ing" of bad behavior.

Sometimes it's just a way to feel superior, insulting but basically harmless. ("I didn't do X when I was young, and so when I read about young people doing X now, it means that my generation was superior to the current crop of young people.")

Sometimes it's a way to deflect self-examination, to the detriment of both the person and their community at large. (The meme that racism happens only in the American South, or that intolerant Christian Americans live only in rural areas. Or that only certain genres of popular music contain violent misogynist lyrics.)

Sometimes it costs lives, and means that some truly bad people are punished much worse than others. (The idea that mass violence is terrorism only if it's committed in the name of certain religions and not others.)

From small to large, it all ticks me off, the idea that people do bad things because they're members of groups that just coincidentally the speaker doesn't belong to.

Very well stated. I could go on about this for pages, but I won't. You've done a good job of saying what needs to be said.