Well-intentioned citizens reproduce extremist tropes against Roma without awareness

Evidence

European civilized opinion is made up of the vast majority of right-thinking and well-intentioned European citizens that perceive the rise of the extreme right as one of the core challenges to a cosmopolitan, more open and more inclusive Europe. The sources of extreme right-wing sentiment are usually located in social malaise, corruption of traditional values, fear and threat. Extreme views are said to refl ect the irrational responses of a, psychologically insecure, minority. Yet, when the same right-thinking and well-intentioned citizens talk about Romanies they reproduce, uncritically and unthinkingly, extremist tropes, degrading and dehumanizing repertoires that transform or diminish Romanies’ moral standing in society. European civilized opinion comprises well-intentioned prejudices that rehearse degrading, debasing, dehumanizing descriptions of people. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 751

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the ‘polite majority’ complicity theme from The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Naqvi’s Home Boy regarding liberal societies’ ambivalent treatment of Others.
• SEED: Angle: an essay on how ‘respectable’ prejudice operates — the exact discursive moves by which well-meaning people rehearse dehumanizing repertoires while condemning the far right.
• DEEPTHINKING: Dense paradox: civilized opinion as a contradictory mixture where the very citizens who condemn extremism are its carriers — resists one-sentence summary.

Related

• Even tolerant people express revulsion-themed hostility toward Roma (similarity 0.81)
• Roma are degraded and reminded of their degraded status (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-Roma prejudice is far more complex than direct hostility (similarity 0.79)