The decent middle’s prejudice is conscious moral unease, not unconscious bias

Evidence

When explaining, or trying to respond to, the challenges that racism poses in European liberal democracies, we tend to be swayed by either manifestations of unadulterated hostility or unconditional sympathy, whilst, sometimes, forgetting to consider the views and experiences of the decent (tolerant, reasonable) ‘middle’. We are more inclined to believe that the prejudices of the decent ‘middle’ are the outcome of implicit, automatic, unconscious bias. Yet, when one turns to the predicament of Romani people in Europe one observes that the presence of Romanies creates marked moral uneasiness for the vast majority of people who see themselves belonging to the decent ‘middle’. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 36

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Challenges the framing that respectable people’s prejudice is automatic/implicit; posits instead a deliberate moral-unease dialogue. Rewards sustained reading.
• DEFINE: Introduces ‘the decent middle’ as an analytic category — the tolerant, reasonable people whose prejudices are hardest to confront.
• XREF: connects to: Only people with internalized nonprejudiced standards feel guilt over their actual prejudiced responses — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2106

Related

• Racism against Romani people is the last acceptable prejudice in Europe (similarity 0.82)
• Roma are degraded and reminded of their degraded status (similarity 0.81)
• Prejudices arising from denying moral worth need societal analysis (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-Roma prejudice resists explanation as individual psychological bias (similarity 0.79)
• The norm against prejudice protects only prejudices seen as unwarranted (similarity 0.78)