Bigotry

Last night at the gym, as I was collecting my things from my locker, I overheard a group of men talking. I might add that it’s not particularly difficult to do so when the conversationalists insist upon bellowing their views across an entire wing of the changing room, but in truth that is another matter altogether.

These men started by talking about “chicks who look like men”; a conversation that was neither the height of intellectual badinage, nor a well informed bastion of tolerance and diversity, but on the whole not their priority. It was ‘the gays’ that really seemed to get to them, you see.

Of course, they saw this as a natural segue from one group of queers to another, disregarding the intricacies and subtleties of these disparate, if not mutually exclusive, groups. But the real problem was the bigoted display that followed. This is a rough quote:

“Yea, but even if you don’t like dem, there are gays everywhere; they in government, they on television, they all around you. [sic]“

Which was followed by another’s contribution of; “They can get married now!” – repeated four times, as if that is the best way to get one’s point across.

Civilised people, for obvious reasons, now regard this kind of talk as abhorrent and repulsive. What troubles me is that these men couldn’t see that. It would an irrelevance normally, but it is important in context to note that these men were black. It is entirely conceivable that a white Englishman may, due to his own ignorance, be subject to such bigotry. He has, after all, enjoyed a position of extreme privilege throughout history, free from the kind of talk that I’ve quoted above. Saying “white men are in power and can marry!” is, in the light of history, not remotely noteworthy.

What baffles me then, is why these men – with at least some personal tie to a history of bigotry – could not mentally replace the word ‘gay’ with ‘black’. “There are blacks everywhere; they’re in government, they’re on television, they’re all over the place!”, or “Black people can get married now!”. These ridiculous ramblings would likely anger and disgust the men I overheard, as they ought to anybody.

Considering how recently racial inequality was to be found in even ‘civilised’ countries, these men would live very different lives had chance brought them into the world merely fifty years earlier. With such a painfully direct connection to the putrid hatred of the past, why were these men so unable to appreciate that irrational discrimination – whoever is concerned – is always reprehensible?