[comex]

It's impossible for someone raised in modern society to not be influenced by its thousands of cultural associations and tropes. That's not much of a leap; being exposed to something (anything) and it having absolutely zero effect on you is not how humans work. It's not a bad thing, since most tropes are positive or neutral. But if some of those tropes are harmful, you can refute them and act counter to them, but that doesn't mean they won't still have some influence on your thought processes.

I'm not religious, but from my understanding, it is kind of like original sin. Humans are flawed; you can't fix that but you can minimize it and you can be forgiven for it. Same goes for the specific flaw that the brain is really prone to stereotypes, as a sort of cognitive shortcut.

Edit: By the way, contrary to a claim in a link in one of my sibling replies, this is not a 'sin' specific to white people. People who are themselves members of minority races are influenced by the same tropes as everyone else.

[jariel]

Just the opposite: it's perfectly normal for people to classify things, people, ideas, to have all kinds of such thoughts - it's normative and healthy.

It is not sinful or flawed in any way.

That this happens among 'all kinds of people' is not hugely relevant.

That people would try to classify normal behavior as examples of racism is extremist.

In some situations, said subconscious thoughts might alter decision making in small ways is something we should be aware of, but even then it's not 'sinful' and the mere suggestion is at the root of the problem.

We're not talking about actual racists here, we're talking about ladies knitting groups and the minor triflings that develop into purity wars.

[comex]

> Just the opposite: it's perfectly normal for people to classify things, people, ideas, to have all kinds of such thoughts - it's normative and healthy.

Indeed, which is why I said:

> It's not a bad thing, since most tropes are positive or neutral.

However, in the specific case of tropes that are racist or have racist components, being influenced by them certainly is bad to a varying extent.

> In some situations, said subconscious thoughts might alter decision making in small ways is something we should be aware of, but even then it's not 'sinful' and the mere suggestion is at the root of the problem.

I think we’re in violent agreement. The important thing is to be aware of unconscious bias, and try to counteract it where possible.

> We're not talking about actual racists here, we're talking about ladies knitting groups and the minor triflings that develop into purity wars.

I’m referring to actual racist tropes. I cannot speak for the knitting group example: the article certainly makes it seem like the accusations of racism are crying wolf, and it is probably accurate to a significant extent, but the article also obviously has an anti-‘political-correctness’ agenda, so it may be presenting the facts in a biased manner.

(And, unsurprisingly, the website it’s published on is anti-progressive more broadly. From a skim of the current front page, in terms of concrete social issues, I see one article saying that “the inconvenient truth is that transwomen are male”, while another recounts media bias” “when I worked for a pro-life organisation”. More abstractly, I count at least 5 articles complaining about progressives and political correctness.)