When minority members commit high profile crimes (like domestic terrorism), we all feel under threat

[whatthehey]

14. Perhaps a little, but no not the same

When churches get burned down or congregations shot up I confess to hoping and praying it's not some loony trying to become an actual militant atheist instead of the internet fantasy (then I remember the inherent contradiction and stick to just hoping... .) There are two major differences of course. My skin does not proclaim me a nonbeliever to all ahead of my very presence, and, outside the sophomoric wannabe wits of the Religion group apologists, few people look to random acts of individual atheists as representative of the whole. While there's naught that can be done about the visual identification part, the one minority=all minorities thing should be easy, but is depressingly hard to address.

I confess I don't know where it comes from. I really don't see group-based confirmation bias as prevalent anywhere else other than race. You get a bit of it with age I suppose. There's plenty of people who pretend kids in "their" day were respectful and kind and gentle (even when my day was the same day as theirs and I surely don't remember us all being saints) and any misbehavior of a child now demonstrates they're all nasty and poorly brought up, but even then you don't see the "if I consider one child I know all children" thing like you do with racial minorities.

It was an ostensibly benign example that really brought this home to me. In the late 90s I was living in an extremely white area (<3% black) working for an educational materials company. The owner was reviewing cartoon artwork for a display which showed several kids on a schoolbus with a black boy in the back seat. One of the managers wondered if that may be perceived as racially insensitive. The owner's response was "Well I don't think so but so and so in the warehouse is black so I'll go ask him." And sweeping aside objections, as was often the case incidentally, off they went to the warehouse to ask a random working man, addressed by his boss's boss's boss's boss for undoubtedly the first time, expected to speak for Black America on the topic of racial sensitivity as it related to cartoons their company created. About the best I could do was wonder aloud why nobody thought to ask me if pictures of fat kids were offensive...