EDUCATING THE BIGOT'S ENEMIES

Stephen Eric Bronner, The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2014) ("I didn't write this book with the naive idea of converting bigots. If one or two of them, or their friends, should read it and change their opinions, then so much the better--but I have my doubts. My concern here is also not with analytically defining a philosophical category, specifying an empirical determination, providing inspirational tales of struggles against discrimination or persecution, or condemning an epithet. This book has a different purpose. [I]t is intended to help educate the bigot's enemies. Classic studies have insightfully analyzed different prejudice such as anti-Semitism, homophobia, racism, sexism, and religious intolerance. In practice, however, it makes little sense to compartmentalize them: the bigot rarely has only one target for his hatred. Prejudices tend to intersect in their ideological and political expressions. Solidarity in combating such clusters of hatred requires illuminating what is shared by all yet reducible to none." Id. at 3-4.).