Opinion and Commentary:

Are we guilty of the prejudice of low expectations?

By Debbie Israel

June 20, 2008

I was watching a Mets game recently, and the announcers were talking about an incident that occurred with a player from another team. This player, named Milton, was very upset over a comment made by the announcer and decided to storm off the field and run up four flights of stairs to confront the announcer.

Only the actions of Milton's manager and general manager prevented an ugly encounter. The owner of the team (a former player himself), instead of apologizing for Milton's actions and/or saying that he'll deal with Milton when the team returns home, supported Milton and said words to the effect that he was sorry that Milton was upset by this comment.

The Met announcers were appalled by this response. Milton has been a problem player for most of his career. The Met announcers stated that they didn't think the owner should be "enabling" Milton's bad behavior. They said this so plainly and pointedly.

I thought about what they had said. I agreed wholeheartedly that Milton will not change his ways as long as no one confronts him about his behavior. But I also understand that this is probably the worst form of prejudice.

By treating people as though they are incapable of living in a civilized society without "understanding," we are saying that they are not like us; we are saying we think they are subhuman, uncultured, immoral.

This is what the world does with the terror mongers, namely the Palestinians. Without going into major detail about the history of the Palestinians (even with the short history they have, there is just too much to say), I'll just say that since the Israeli government handed Gaza to the Palestinian Authority on a silver platter (displacing thousands of Israelis in the process), the PA has shown itself to be unworthy of statehood and further real estate "gifts". And yet, the rest of the world (including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) enables their actions. The rest of the world apologizes for them and says we have to understand their culture (this, by the way, is a euphemism for saying we are better than they are; we can't possibly expect them to live up to OUR standards).

I have seen this attitude in families and schools. This is the attitude of understand the bully. This is the attitude of my child is perfect and can do no wrong. This is the attitude of we can't expect any better from them because they are children and we don't want to injure their fragile egos so we'll allow them to get away with anti-social behavior. But if we were really concerned with their egos, we would challenge them to accomplish things. We would expect them to follow rules in progressively more adult ways as they get older. By doing this we encourage them and help them grow and improve their self-esteem because as they achieve these goals, they will feel more accomplished, more adult, more civilized.

Even in situations where this attitude is not quite as dangerous, I still find it unsettling. That's because this is prejudiced disguised at political correctness. That's because this sort of patronizing paternalistic attitude creates sociopaths in society. And that's because we can see by looking at the microcosm of Gaza what sort of terror mongers it creates in the macrocosm of the world.

By continuing this superior attitude and allowing our "children" (that is, radical muslims) to continue this anti-social behavior (that of treating women worse than they treat their animals, that of taking what they want, that of killing people just for existing, that of glorifying murder) we put ourselves in peril. We put our families in peril. We put our country in peril. And, worst of all, we put the entire world in peril.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.