I want to draw your attention to a post by “C. K. Ryan” at Quillette here’s a telling snippet:
There’s an episode from my own past that illustrates this general principle nicely. I’m young and arguing with my stepfather about politics. In Canada, where we live, our nation’s treatment of Indigenous peoples is a shameful stain on our history. The Indigenous population remains marginalized, their communities being often poor and isolated. We were discussing what needed to be done to remedy this. My stepfather argued that there is only so much the government can do to improve the lot of any group, and that states should create the conditions in which people can lift themselves up, before getting out of the way entirely. It’s a perfectly reasonable position, one I’m sympathetic to now. But at the time, I was having none of it. Not only was he on the wrong side of the issue, he was on the wrong side of history. Frustrated and angry after a lengthy, emotional exchange, I called him a racist, practically spitting the word at him. In fact, my stepfather is nothing of the sort. I’ve never heard him utter an unkind word, let alone one that betrayed an attitude of bigotry. This wasn’t a case of him denying historical wrongs. He simply disagreed what steps could best be taken to address a problem we both recognized as real. Thinking back on the encounter still makes me feel ashamed.
There is a fundamental injustice in judging people based on groups to which they belong, indeed, in making final judgments about people at all. Assess based on people’s words and actions (especially their actions) rather than their race, religion, or what you assume they believe. People are individuals and treating them as proxies for groups you despise is unjust, a rejection of their dignity as human beings.
“Assess based on people’s words and actions (especially their actions) rather than their race, religion, or what you assume they believe. ”
Yes, if they give you enough time to do that before they judge first and jump you.