Political Tribes: A Comment

For a list of my book reviews, see here. 

I recently mentioned Amy Chua's book "Political Tribes" (Pub. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018, London, ISBN 978-1-4088-8154-5; Amazon; a review here). Well, I've now finished reading it, and:

• about 75% of it I agree with, ranging from, "oh, that makes sense" to "<expletive deleted> yeah!"; 
• about 10% I'm neutral about, and 
• about 15% of it I disagree with, ranging from, "no, that doesn't seem right" to "<expletive deleted> no!";

My main problem is the conclusion, which is that face-to-face contact potentially enables people to overcome their biases. I agree with that - quite strongly, but it isn't a viable or sensible solution to the problem of bigotry in society.

There are too many bigots, with too many forms of hate, to expect that members of minorities can realistically meet them all, and convert them.

Apart from the mathematical impossibility, it is incredibly wearing on the victims of discrimination - after 30 years, I am heartily fed up with having to justify my existence simply to get some basic manners out of bigots.

That also illustrates the moral dilemma - it is not for the victims of wrongful behaviour to demonstrate that their persecutors are wrong. If I was to take a slightly different perspective on that, Lesson Ten of the MOOC Chile course "Introduction to Human Rights" contains the following:

These prohibited grounds operate as a reason to invert the burden of proof in cases in which the law, state organs, public officials, or private actors make a distinction between a person who displays any of these characteristics and another one who does not.
After making a prima facie case that such a distinction took place - for example, between two workers of different skin colour - the burden of proof turns to the State or the private actor to show that the distinction was legitimate, necessary, and proportionate. If it was not, the distinction is arbitrary and constitutes discrimination.

Morally, it is not up to me to justify that others should refrain from their abusive behaviour - the abuser must demonstrate a valid justification for doing so, and, if they cannot, their behaviour is wrong.

Going back to Ms Chua's book, in simpler cases, such as a political divide, this approach can be useful, and it could possibly be used to get the leaders of communities which are biased to change their positions and allow more effective education, but the best solution remains prevention: counter the social engineering (by religions, peers, parents, etc) that turns children, who are mostly (not all!) relatively blank slates into haters - rather, actively teach them, in school, to be accepting and tolerant.