Stephen Law

  Consider what we might call the ‘trope’ criterion of bigotry:   if there’s a negative attribute associated with an ethnic/racial/sexual traditionally stigmatized minority (e.g. they’re greedy, terrorists, bad drivers, over-emotional, violent, conniving, sexist, etc.) and a person maintains that someone of that ethnicity/race/sex has that negative attribute, then that person is a bigot.   Of course we have a moral duty to be self-reflective and carefully monitor what we say about the members of such traditionally stigmatised minorities. It's very easy to slip into adopting toxic cliches and stereotypes about women, or gay people, or black people, or Jews, or Muslims, etc. without realising we have done so. Those who are justifiably sympathetic to the view that we have this moral duty to monitor ourselves and others and to avoid adopting poisonous stereotypes may well be drawn to the trope criterion of bigotry.   However, it's easy to...