Is Preferring White Meat Prejudiced?

 

“Friend Xerxes writes”—this has become the usual start to my Sunday sermons.

This week, friend Xerxes writes that “prejudice – racial or otherwise – can be defined only those on the receiving end.”

And he cites as example an incident that proves the opposite. He had three Jamaican guests to Christmas dinner, and asked if they wanted white or dark meat. They all chose dark meat, thinking he was referring to their skin colour.

In fact, prejudice can never be reliably defined by those on the “receiving” end; because prejudice speaks to motive, and none of us can read minds.

Only the person accused of prejudice knows for certain whether the charge is true. 

Xerxes goes on to say “I can never know if I’m expressing unrecognized prejudices unless someone points them out to me.”

Yet I do think we all must know when we are being prejudiced. Prejudice violates the essence of morality, which is the awareness of human equality (“do unto others”); we are all capable of understanding this simple principle, and we all have a conscience. 

It is close to a perfect contradiction to suggest we can be unaware of our own prejudices—that we can think a thought without knowing we are thinking it.

Of course, there is real prejudice in the world—lots of it. One good example is the claim that only “white” people can be prejudiced. Another is that certain groups are “indigenous.” Or that only “black lives matter.” Or that “men” cause violence. Or that this ethnic group owes reparations to that ethnic group. Or that fetuses are not human.

And so it goes, generation to generation.