Thinking in Groups — A Message to Race-Hustlers and Identity-Grifters
Reading a lot of the posts here on Medium — especially the political — I re-re-realise there is still a huge tendency of people to think in groups.
This isn’t exactly a surprise, but it’s also something that shouldn’t be taken as such a given that it should never be mentioned. In fact, I’d say it should be mentioned because divisive ideology seems to be pushing people to the danger point, and if the growing need for humanity to unify is to be recognised, then this tendency should be one of the first to be overcome.
Instead of writers writing about individuals they encounter, and countering their positions, there’s a tendency to reduce people to their perceived group identities. White, Black, English, Irish, Male, Female, Cis, Gay, Straight, whatever…
Then, with that established, the trend seems to be that they attribute certain attitudes or behaviours — which could just as easily be attributed across humanity as a whole — to one of these groups in order to make it seem like evidence of a perceived failure or shortcoming of that particular group.
First and foremost, my initial reaction is a suspicion that these writers are not engaging with a variety of individuals of their opposing perceived groups regularly, and when they do, it seems to them to be…
