Try This Test For Ethnic And Ideological Bias

Check out more of the story of what happened near the Lincoln
Memorial last week in order to get a fairer picture.

Like many who learned about the controversial incident involving  some high school students and a native American elder last Saturday, I found myself quick to judge the young men with the 'Make America Great Again' hats. They were all being rude and racist, period.

And while there is evidence of some of their comments and gestures being inappropriate, one of the things I learned about myself was that I'm often too quick to rush to judgment before hearing all of the story.

For example, I realized my biases against the hyper-nationalism represented by the MAGA slogan, along with my bias in favor of native Americans, led me to some unfair conclusions. When I saw more video recordings of what preceded and followed the segment I first saw on social media, I realized the story was more complex than it appeared, and that the taunts of a few members of a nearby radical fringe group, the Black Hebrew Israelites, were a major part of the problem.

So some recent Facebook responses on this have led me to post the photo above and invite readers to imagine their reaction if any of the following had been a part of the story:

1. What if instead of a native American with a drum there had been a Roman Catholic nun with a rosary, and what if the youth in the confrontation had been young Muslim women wearing hijabs?

2. Or what if the 'elder' had been a burley white nationalist wearing a MAGA cap and chanting pro Trump slogans, and the youth were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts?

You get the picture. If you're like me, even if other details of the event had been similar, your visceral responses would not be the same.

Maybe we should all take time to apply these kinds of Rorschach tests of our objectivity and fairness.