In praise of prejudice, February 14th, 2024,

Dear Gavin, in my last letter, I went into the origins of the authenticity jive.

What we need to do now is analyze this a little bit more.

If we do this, it will not stop our stereotyping and projecting, but it will help us to understand it a little bit better.

We can at least come to understand our own internal reactions better.

Whenever you have an identifiable subgroup, the larger society outside that subgroup starts

generalizing and making assumptions about

any new member of that class that they may happen to meet.

They believe that they've discovered a shorthand way of learning about the person before having

exchanged one word with that person.

You can always tell a Harvard band, but you can't tell him much.

Jews are good with money.

Vermont farmers are tasked to turn.

Creighton's are evil beasts, lazy gluttons, and liars.

All of this, of course, is what we now call prejudice, and according to our ruling etiquette

overlords, prejudice is almost the original sin. You just don't do that, not anymore. But prejudgments are actually

inescapable. Before your first visit to the UK, you are going to have certain conceptions

in your mind about the Brits, assumptions you have garnered from your movie watching habits.

And when you go over there, some of those assumptions are going to be blown to

smithereens, and others of them are going to be radically reinforced.

It really is true, for example, that for Americans, a hundred years is a long time, and for the Brits, a hundred miles is a long way.

Certain cultural expectations about groups you don't know very well are inescapable. Our current generation of whites now

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