Analysis Of In Defense Of Prejudice

Jonathan Rauch’s essay “In Defense of Prejudice” essay immediately stood out to me for a few reasons. As a black Muslim woman living in America, I’ve dealt with my fair share of prejudice and for that I’ve always had a negative view towards it. Also, I found the title to be striking and unconventional which automatically drew me towards it. In “In Defense of Prejudice”, Rauch makes it clear that while he is not in favor of prejudice, he is in favor of allowing people to express their prejudice as openly and freely as they choose to. He takes a somewhat controversial stance with his belief that banning hate speech actually goes against freedom of speech and that eradicating prejudice should not be the goal of Americans, but to use prejudice

As he regained calmness, he realized he was being silly and that a couple of teenagers are not a threat to him; this is where he uses logos once again. While “faggot” may not be a violent word to him, it could very well be one to another gay man. He maintains that oppressive language is not violent and I would argue that he is not well versed enough to make such a bold statement like that. I’m not prepared to challenge a gay man on his own experiences and what he drew from it, but I’m more than willing to challenge his belief that hate speech is not violent. A word like “nigger” has such a revolting, violent history that when used today it creates an unsafe environment for black people. Generally, people who use language like that aren’t very peaceful people and certainly pose a threat to black people. While I respect Rauch and his views, I believe he has a poor insight in to how harmful hate speech is, especially to non-white minorities because hate speech often materializes into violent acts and

Pluralism is the idea that rather than punish the author of bigoted words, but criticize the bigoted ideas while believe that even one racist makes the society racist and that bigotry will not be tolerated whatsoever. Pluralism believes that, “There will always be some racists. Marginalize them, ignore them, exploit them, ridicule them, take pains to make their policies illegal, but otherwise leave them alone” (Rauch 574). This line of thinking resonates with me and I wish it was a possibility in our society today but it’s not. Racism is still rampant in America, and there are not just “some” racists. They’re everywhere and many of them control many institutions in this country. I can’t find myself fully committing to the idea of pluralism until we get to the place of where only a small percentages of Americans are racist, but we’re not there