A Defense of Prejudice

According to a 1999 Gallup poll, 51 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist in a presidential election. This is higher than the percentage who would not vote for a homosexual (41 percent). As a loud and proud atheist (I came out to my friends in preschool by proclaiming the non-existence of God), I find this to be very sad and demoralizing. Are we really worse than the homosexuals? I suppose the average God-fearing American reasons that at least gay people have souls, whereas atheists are actually possessed by the Devil.

But before I go about lamenting how bigoted and benighted the American people are, I must pause to consider whether refusing to vote for a certain category of people is a priori evidence of prejudice. Or rather, since the very definition of the word “prejudice” implies a predisposition for or against something, whether certain prejudices are permissible in the democratic process.

Most people would agree that refusing to vote for a black or a female candidate on principle is a sign of deplorable bigotry (unfortunately, the same poll also proves that many Americans are still deplorable bigots). I think this moral imperative extends to homosexuals, although the country is belatedly establishing social norms against anti-gay bias. But what about religion? According to a 2003 study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 38 percent of adult Americans would personally not vote for a Muslim. Is a refusal to vote for a member of a particular religion similarly unacceptable?

This gave me pause, because it made me realize that I, too, would probably never vote for a Mormon or a Muslim presidential candidate. Being thoroughly inculcated in egalitarian values, this epiphany made me somewhat queasy at first. But I’ve come to embrace my scarlet letter. Why, after all, would I choose to vote for a person who subscribes to some ideas that I might find deeply disagreeable—just to attire myself in the self-congratulatory virtue of tolerance?

There is, at heart, a crucial difference between intrinsic traits like skin color and gender and philosophical stances like religious conviction. Hatred of a person or a group of people is not the same as hatred of an idea or a religion. It’s the distinction Christians often make when they say, “hate the sin, not the sinner.” It is therefore odious that many Americans would not vote for an African-American, but not necessarily wrong that they would not vote for a Muslim.

Of course, one might object that religions are hardly just a set of ideas divorced from reality, that indeed, religions tend to be the product of an ethno-cultural background. But while ethnicity or race often determine extrinsic behavior and values, they are by themselves entirely intrinsic. One is born Indian or black and cannot change this identity. Yet there is always an element of choice, regardless of whether it is exercised, when choosing a religion; we are not chained to ideas at birth. The quintessential example is Salman Rushdie, who was born into an Islamic family but has since become one of the world’s most vociferous critics of the Islamic faith.

So does my refusal to vote for a Mormon or Muslim presidential candidate make me prejudiced? Yes, but not in a bad way. It is a prejudice against ideas, not people. And that kind of prejudice is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, in a democracy.



David L. Golding ‘08, a Crimson editorial comper, is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Dunster House.