Everyone wants to be liked and accepted. It’s a survival instinct hardwired into the synaptic pathway structure by our DNA. Societal nurturing can alter the synaptic pathways over time. For instance, social roles will alter them over time via expectation and self fulfillment manifest destiny. If you tell yourself something about yourself enough, eventually it will come true, which is actually pretty much the modern authoritative opinion. In a similar fashion, the duties and expectations of a social role will cause the synaptic pathways to adjust themselves in order to comply with new social roles, such as, doctor, judge, teacher, preacher, licensed driver, high school student, high school graduate, college student, college graduate, policemen, firemen… all these things come with responsibilities and social expectations about one’s behavior, and humans adjust their train of thought to comply with them. Therefore, over time, certain assumptions and attitudes become hardwired into our personality and we tend to react accordingly without rationally reasoning out a proper response and line of behavior. Whereby, by the time a human is a teenager, they are a brain washed bigot in some way, shape, form, or fashion, relative to the social conventions they have been exposed to over time. This means all humans, including you and me.
Being a minority or a majority are both social roles, therefore both these statuses also affect your cognitive algorithms over time by slowly affecting your synaptic pathway structure no matter which one you belong to, whether you like it or not. Many police officers are now given courses to counter act this psychological conditioning. In order to deal with a problem you 1st have accept that it exists. We all have this issue in our character and you have to be aware of it in order to successfully counter it’s affects on your behavior, especially your instinctive responses, which can be a critical attribute in some occupations, such as law enforcement. Unless you grew up alone under a rock, you are prejudice against anyone that doesn’t conform to your way of thinking and the physical characteristics of your childhood tribe. People that are raised in diverse communities have less baggage to deal with, but they have it nonetheless. Social dynamics and the human cognitive algorithms are so complex that there is virtually no end to the possible configurations of bigotry. Consensual validation and fear of the unknown also contribute to the complex process of developing bigotry. It’s a deep seeded synaptic mess that takes a long time and a lot of patience to unravel.
You are not going to change the World overnight. The internet doesn’t make you omnipotent and idealism doesn’t pay the rent. Whether you are a majority or a minority, you instinctively want to be a bigot of some sort or another subconsciously, whether you like or not. All humans most focus and concentrate to override our natural tendencies to automatically react or behave without suppressing our primitive impulses to behave brashly. Freedom is just an illusion to sugarcoat the consequences and human nature evolves at a snail’s pace. As Edith Ann
would say, “ and that’s the truth.”