The Ultimate (and Impossible) Cure For Bigotry

by Thomas M. Pender

I have always had a major problem with bigots.  Even as a very young TV addict, I never liked Archie Bunker.  It took many years for me to figure out that the audience was laughing at his small-minded character.  When I would watch the show with my grandmother, all I saw was an awful person with horrid ideas about people, based on elements that should not be used as human categories.

The amazing thing was that Archie Bunker’s daughter Gloria didn’t have as small a mind as her father.  Typically, racism and all other forms of bigotry are force-fed from generation to generation.  As babies and small children, we revere our parents, and believe that every word from their lips is gospel.  This is where bigots come from.  If all a child hears from a loved one is that any particular group of humans is worthless, that child will believe it, just as they believe everything else their loved one teaches them.

So years ago, I came up with a solution to all bigotry as we know it.  It will never happen, but it brings a smile to my face to muse about it.  In this fantasy, the procedure would go as follows: Adjust the questions on the census polls to include attitudes about immigration, various ethnic, social and belief-based groups, and other bigotry-inducing topics.  Use this information to locate all the households in the country (and the world would follow after our tremendous example, no doubt!) that include both bigots and children under the age of four.  Next, take the children under the age of four away from the bigots, and give them to households with more humane views on other humans.  Then wait about 100 years for all the existing bigots over the age of four to shuffle off the mortal coil.

Voila!  With no children to whom bigots could teach bigotry, the practice itself would eventually die.

But again, this is sheer fantasy.  The good news in the real world is that interracial and interfaith marriages and families are much more common, which means that future generations will have such mixed heritages, that there will be very few groups and individuals against whom they could even form prejudices.

Since childnapping – even for the greater good – is not only highly unlikely, but rather creepy, perhaps what humans should aim for is the creation of an actual “human race,” through the fine art of comingling the existing races.  According to the Old Testament, the races and nationalities were created as a punishment.  Let us prove we have learned our lesson, and while we promise not to challenge God again or be silly enough to believe we can build a tower to Heaven, let us become one society.  Let’s not wait for the Martians to attack in order to find a common ground with our fellow humans.

Simply love your brother and sister humans for the sheer joy of bigots’ discomfort.  That’s an awesome enough reason in itself!