Bigotry
by Charlie Reese

Commentary by Jerry Abbott

It's easy to avoid bigotry if you just remember that most of the time when our minds leap from the particular to the general, we are making an error in reasoning. Inductive reasoning, which goes from many, many particulars to the general, does not condone going from one or two particulars to the general.

Inductive reasoning goes with the preponderance of the evidence. The heavier that preponderance is, the higher is the confidence level of the conclusion.

It would, indeed, be "bigotry" to judge the entire Black race by the behavior of one or two of its members. However, bigotry is not a characteristic of most racists. The words "bigotry" and "racism" have been improperly equated by the same folks who improperly equated "citizenship" with "nationality." Jew know who I mean.

One of the worst racial bigots I know is a man from Brooklyn who was badly beaten as a youth by three black hoodlums. Instead of recognizing that three individual hoodlums do not represent the whole, he has spent his life hating black people. Some black people, having had bad experiences with white individuals, spend their lives hating whites.

Is he really a "bigot," though? Maybe his beating was merely his "wake-up call." Perhaps after he was beaten, he went to the library and looked up the FBI Supplementary Crime reports, which prove that Blacks commit violent crimes against White victims, in the United States, more than 20 times as often as the reverse. If this is the reason for his hatred, then his dislike of Blacks isn't the ignorance of bigotry, but the knowledge that usually characterizes racism.

For Mr. Reese to assume that his acquaintance is a bigot, hating from ignorance, rather than a racist, hating from informed judgment, would itself be a kind of bigotry.

And so it goes with whatever group happens to be the target of the day. Bigotry is so persistent because it is the lazy way to cope with complexity. One doesn't have to think, and most people find thinking a difficult and noxious task. It is so much easier to condemn a group than to evaluate individuals. It is so much easier to accept the pronouncements of demagogues than to do one's own research.

Bigotry is less prevalent than Charlie Reese thinks. Most of what he misinterprets as bigotry (otherwise known as "prejudice") is, in fact, racism. The distinction between them is that the one is an uninformed extrapolation and the other is an well-informed conclusion.

How many will read my Racial Violence Statistics pages and come away with the idea that I didn't carefully consider the evidence concerning race-related differences in violent crimes? (DOES Reese have statistical evidence that such racial differences don't exist? If so, I'd like to see it. If he doesn't, then which of us is the "bigot"?) How many people will believe that I don't know how to weigh details of evidence carefully after reading my pages about the murder of Rachel Corrie? How many people will doubt that I can think after they've read my page on how to calculate transfer orbits?

Charlie Reese must know better than to confuse racism with bigotry. At least, I think he does. I believe that his confusion is intentionally crafted, maybe to please someone to whom he is beholden. I'll keep on thinking so unless he says something that makes me think differently.