Multicultural Racism

Everyone talks about racism, as if it’s the only unfair prejudice in the United States.  People often forget other forms of biases rampant in our country.  Here’s just a categories in which people can be viciously biased (in no particular order):

Gender, age, height, physical attractiveness, weight, disabilities, religion, sexual orientation,  and socioeconomic status.

It happens all the time and people don’t seem to bat an eye, because many people are convinced that only a few biases are potentially dangerous.  Okay, lately (past few decades) gender, sexual orientation, and weight have gotten more attention, but there are a few biggies that I’m surprised people don’t talk more about.

Religion.  If you line up all the countries in the world in a graph that depicts the relation of a nations amount of wealth and how religious they are, they all pretty much fall in line with the wealthier countries tending to be less religious.  There is one blaring outlier however, the United States.  We are both very rich, and very religious.  Now, it’s not bad to be religious, but look where its gotten us.  There is so much hate and malice justified by religion in this country.  Religion is so big in this country, that you much pretend to be religious to get anywhere, look at the presidential nominees for example.  I don’t think any of them are particularly that religious, not more so than the common citizen (with the exception of Sarah Palin), but they have to talk like they are devout.

Height.  When was the last time you saw a 5′4″ guy with a 5′8″ woman.  Not too often, and when you do see it you think, “How did that happen?”.  Now, I’m not talking little people, just people a little shorter than average.  Okay, its somewhat understandable, but the vast majority of women surveyed would not even consider a man shorter than them.  In one study, they lined up a bunch of men, some short, some average, some tall.  They were told the tall guys were flakes and unreliable types, while the shorter men were world class athletes, nobel prize winners, and pulitzer prize winners (sometimes all three incorporated into one short package).  Still, the vast majority of women would not consider these shorter men.  Shorter people get stiffed in many pockets of society, probably more than we think.

Ever notice how good looking people are successful?  Not only that, they are much better at invoking empathy in people, enlisting help, and just generally better at starting conversations and maintaining relations (even the really shallow ones).  This one I think is an evolved biological mechanism, but it still sucks.  The only consistent exception I can see to this is Rock stars, you know what I’m talking about.

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