Welcome to Walls and Mirrors

This blog is about real and perceived prejudice. It is intended to be a place where you can arm yourself with arguments you may never have heard before and come to “know your enemy” (those who you charge with prejudice or those who have charged you). The normal format of the entries will be to present a claim that someone has made and to examine whether it does or does not satisfy the definition of prejudice.

I should warn the reader that, in some cases, I will examine claims that most people agree are extreme. In so doing, I risk giving the impression that these are worthy of more serious consideration than they are usually given in the media. However, merely dismissing a view and labelling it ‘prejudiced’ is not likely to convince those who hold it of anything. The approach taken here will be to spell out arguments that are otherwise skimmed over. With this in mind, I hope that the material presented will provide some helpful resources for those attempting to overcome prejudices they encounter (“walls”) as well as provoking some personal reflection (“mirrors”). Unless otherwise stated, the conclusions presented here are of course my own and subject to revision.

If prejudice arises from irrationally held beliefs, then it may seem like an exercise in futility to construct detailed rational arguments about why these beliefs are wrong. I agree that this is unlikely to make much difference unless the counterarguments can be made so dramatically as to leave no room for the opposing view. Realistically, prejudice is more likely to be overcome by addressing the fears and anxieties that these rationalisations provide cover for.