Moral stigma against anti-Semitism makes people afraid to examine their own prejudice

Evidence

This feeling that anti-Semitism is something sinful and disgraceful, something that a civilized person does not suffer from, is unfavorable to a scientific approach, and indeed many people will admit that they are frightened of probing too deeply into the subject. They are frightened, that is to say, of discovering not only that anti-Semitism is spreading, but that they themselves are infected by it. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 376

Categorization

• SHARE: The exact kind of line a single friend obsessed with Orwell’s essays or the psychology of denial would want sent to them.
• DEEPTHINKING: The paradox that moral condemnation of a prejudice can itself obstruct the science of it deserves sitting with — it recurs in every later study of implicit bias.