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“I just have very strong feelings about the Middle East. I think we ought to just get out and stay out of there, let them all blow themselves up.” “But these are Americans,” I said. “They eat Wheaties for breakfast. They read about Lebanon in the newspapers. Scratch them they bleed, and so on.” But I had made him nervous. We disconnected, mutually disgruntled, having slammed ourselves up against the limits of liberalism a little too early in the day. Working for “Arabs” is bad for a journalist’s business. With that one word, you lose credibility. Suddenly, everything you do comes under close scrutiny. For instance, while writing a short children’s book on the life of Anwar Sadat for a series on political leaders, I weathered several anxious telephone calls cautioning me “not to go overboard on the other side.” No matter how I tried, I never could Wnd out just what the other side’s tack on Sadat would be—or even who was on the other side. But I did Wnd out that after my manuscript had passed through several layers of approval, one editor asked, “Do you think we ought to check this with the Israelis?” Let’s not even ask which Israelis he would check with. Let’s ask, would this editor check a biography of Menachem Begin with “the Egyptians”? I haven’t had so much trouble telling people what I’m up to since I took a job at In These Times, which proudly calls itself “the independent socialist newspaper.” Then, too, people looked at me pleadingly—“Don’t try to convert me, please!”—when I told them what I did for a living. That, too, was a job for which I was expected to apologize. I Wgured In These Times had given me great training for my work with the ADC, but a talk with Palestinian literary critic Edward Said, whom I had Wrst met through In These Times, showed me the di¤erence. He wasn’t at all surprised to hear about the usual reaction to my bombshell announcement. “Well, I’m used to it,” I said conWdently. “All those years at a socialist paper, you know.” “Yeah,” he said, with a little laugh. “But now you’re a socialist with leprosy.” —Pat Aufderheide, a senior editor at In These Times, is the director of social media at American University. The New Bigotry Mike Ervin december 1984 Bigotry isn’t dead, though it has taken on a more subtle identity. The old shrines of passionate ignorance, the “Colored Only” fountains and washrooms of the South, have been replaced by new monuments to intolerance. The new bigotry isn’t easily spotted because it isn’t based on hatred for a particular race or sex. Few trip the blind or make fun of the “less fortunate.” But cruelty is just Ervin / The New Bigotry 123 one kind of conditioned ignorance that breeds bigotry. Even after living for twentyeight years with a disability, I continue to run across new variations of the old theme. Sometimes it’s absurdly amusing. While buying yogurt in the grocery store, I’ll notice someone observing me with a star-struck smile that says, “He’s buying yogurt! How remarkable!” My purchase is seen as a superhuman feat; surely my disability must be so unspeakably dreadful that only superhuman strength could enable me to pick up a container of Dannon. Others view me as subhuman, and my disability becomes synonymous with absolute physical and emotional dependency. The disabled are seen as orphaned infants who must be fed, hosed down, and protected. Rarely am I viewed as just plain human. Bigotry works that way, sanctimonious indi¤erence and inaction: It’s OK to deny basic dignity to people who aren’t exactly human. When the Reagan Administration purged the Social Security disability rolls of what it regarded as lazy freeloaders, more than twenty of the hundreds of thousands who were miraculously cured of their disabilities by Presidential decree chose suicide. One man set himself on Wre in front of a Social Security oªce. These sacriWces on the altar of the new bigotry don’t spark widespread indignation. The disabled can’t even get on the bus, and there is little outcry. The disability rights movement seems radical only because the bigotry it Wghts is so entrenched. In a society based on hate, love is radical. In a society based on oppression, freedom is radical. In a society based...

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