I'm not prejudiced, but...

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(See also: Danth's Law - similarly, insisting something is so, doesn't make it so.)
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*[[Danth's Law]] - similarly, insisting something is so, doesn't make it so.
  
 
==Footnotes==
 
==Footnotes==

Revision as of 18:22, 20 October 2009

I don't want to sound prejudiced or anything, but for one, I am not going to vote for a colored man to be our president
—an anonymous voter interviewed during the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election campaign.[1]


Any sentence that starts with the words "I'm not prejudiced, but . . .", or similar formations ("I'm not racist, but . . .", "I'm not homophobic", "not sexist", etc.) is likely to contradict itself very rapidly. These words are spoken in the mistaken belief that simply saying "I'm not prejudiced" is enough to exempt the speaker from responsibility for the offensive comment they are about to make.

Variations include ending the sentence with "not that there's anything wrong with being gay/black/whatever" after they have just made an offensive statement about them. Or the old classic, "I'm not anti-(fill in the blank), some of my best friends are (fill in the blank)." (Or for the truly curmudgeonly, "I'm not prejudiced, I hate everbody equally!")

The increasingly prevalence of these kinds of statements demonstrates one of the effects of political correctness, in that people with controversial opinions are afraid to be branded as racist or otherwise prejudiced, or even to acknowledge to themselves their own prejudices.

Simultaneously, organisations which are undoubtedly racist have attempted to improve their image with the same kind of rhetoric. For example, in a policy statement for British National Party, leader Nick Griffin repeatedly states that the party is "not racist", while laying out his vision for an all-white Britain, and his belief that nationality is defined along blood lines rather than residency or even cultural factors.[2]

See also

Footnotes

  1. "Obama's Racial Identity Still An Issue", CBS Evening News, Nov. 27, 2007 .
  2. Nick Griffin, "The BNP: Anti-asylum protest, racist sect or power-winning movement?", 2004, at the BNP website.
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