The Opposite of Prejudice

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Todd Patinsky from Port Jefferson, New York.

Hi, Todd. Welcome.

Hi, Todd. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

I’m curious if you can help me sleuth out an antonym or opposite of prejudice.

All right. How’d you come up with this question?

It’s actually an area where I do social science research.

It’s about 10 years ago that I was writing a paper, and I wanted to just make the point that transformative people in terms of community relations typically aren’t merely tolerant or accepting but have stronger attitudes.

And I was reminded and inspired to call you more recently when the marches around Charlottesville and many of the people who came out to support different communities were described as un-hate.

The un-hate movement would seem like a very clunky way and a very somewhat inaccurate way to describe people who are really feeling deeper emotions of kinship, comfort, engagement, support.

So unhate is a negative and you’re looking for something that’s inherently a positive.

And more than just simply not hating, actually have some kind of kinship or affection.

It seems it’s a phenomenon in the world.

The young people go to visit another culture, someone who’s drawn to go deeper or learn more, experience a new cuisine, or simply ask someone they meet a little bit about their background.

Tolerance is the one that most people come back at me with.

But it was funny.

When I went to teaching tolerance, which is a big website for tolerance curriculum, you know, on the front page it says tolerance is surely an imperfect term.

The English language offers no single word that embraces the broad range of skills we need.

So that sort of led me to check, is that accurate?

There’s an interesting notion about the term un-hate.

I think it does do one thing very well.

I agree that it’s clunky and it doesn’t lend itself to any kind of poetry of thought, if I can coin a phrase there.

But it does successfully reflect the idea that not having prejudice is what they’re talking about.

They’re not talking, they’re talking about completely removing prejudice and being at this baseline state of neither positive nor negative.

Right. So they’re not then they’re not removing prejudice and then also adding a positive attribute.

There’s just something we’re not prejudiced or this movement isn’t about prejudice.

So it does do that very well because the opposite of prejudice might not be a positive term.

It might simply be the absence of prejudice.

Yeah, I’m thinking opposite.

Would that be post-judish?

Also clunky, right?

It is clunky.

And then I’m thinking, well, what if you take out the pre in prejudice and then you just have judicious, which is, you know, showing good judgment or sense.

But still, that’s not.

The other thing is it’s interesting that the website, what is it for tolerance?

Teaching tolerance?

Teaching tolerance. It’s interesting that they do accurately point out that there’s no single word for the lack of prejudice or the opposite of prejudice, but there’s no requirements in English that all of our ideas are best encapsulated in a single word.

We don’t require that kind of efficiency of the lexus where one word isn’t the perfect form of language.

And so we should be comfortable with expressing our ideas in phrases or sentences or paragraphs or even chapters in order to get our point across.

On the other hand, if you have a term for something or you come across a term for something, like, for example, sexual harassment, what did we talk about before we had those words?

I mean, I can remember there was a moment for women where you thought sexual harassment. That’s what I’ve been experiencing.

Right. It really clicked for you.

It’s comprehensible on both sides. It doesn’t require a great deal of interpretation or reinterpretation.

Yeah, and you think, oh, somebody else has had this experience that I’ve had and haven’t had words for.

I’m very swayed by that point. And could I throw a word out there for you and your listeners to consider?

Yeah.

Allophilia.

Allophilia, meaning loving the other?

Like or love of the other.

And we go back to some of the language around the civil rights movement.

It really wasn’t about sort of a mere acceptance, but it was something more virtuous.

And it was really about looking to others with a curiosity, an interest, and an affection.

You know, the other thing, I like that term.

I mean, the problem with coining a word is that now you are responsible for spreading it and getting it out there.

Maybe in your work that you can do that.

Maybe you have the audience or the connections to the part of the world that will immediately understand the importance of that word and adopt it.

I don’t know.

I’m thinking about everything that you’re saying here, Todd, and what Martha’s been saying, and looking at what real prejudice is and going, we really need to array all of our weapons against it.

So we need more than one opposition to it.

We do need the word tolerance and maybe allophilia and perhaps the word respect and perhaps the word open-mindedness and maybe a whole bunch of other language all needs to be in our arsenal to equip us to…

There was one word that was used for quite a while, colorblind, in a sense.

And it’s interesting, that has really fallen off, I think, partly as attitudes change and as people realize that groups can really make a difference to how people live and how people interact.

And so that term seems more and more to be abandoned.

I don’t see any more references where as recent as maybe 10, 15 years ago was a term that had a lot of currency.

Colorblind.

Certainly in the research community, and I feel like in broader communities.

I don’t know.

We need a more ambitious vocabulary.

Yeah, I like that word ambitious because you’re talking about something proactive.

And for that reason, I like the word you’re proposing, allophilic, love of the other, liking the other.

Do you think that’s too opaque, though?

I mean, you got it because you understand the etymological roots.

The Greek, yeah.

I think it could be adopted just like, you know, if, I mean, if a word functions well and is a word for something that needs a word for it, you know, maybe it’ll catch on.

Maybe it’ll get popularized.

You never know.

Todd, I got to tell you, we could probably do two or three more hours on your question of looking for the opposite of prejudice.

But I think it’s time to throw it out to our listeners who will surely have ideas.

All right?

Thanks to you and to your listeners.

Take good care.

Take care. Bye.

Thanks, Todd. Bye-bye.

So if you have a word or want to coin a word or find a word that you think really encompasses the opposite of prejudice, where you can say, I am this or I have this characteristic, let us know, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org, or talk to us on Twitter, W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.