Who, exactly, counts as a bigot? A new book on civil rights and marriage law considers the term closely.
Linda McClain wants you to know that even though people can’t physically be together right now, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, they can still help reduce prejudiced and bigoted views through remote social interactions, whether through phone calls, Zooms, social media correspondence, or texting.
“I hope we will find new ways to engage in social contact across boundaries and foster solidarity and reduce prejudice,” says McClain, professor of law at the Boston University School of Law.
She has been an investigator of bigotry in all its ugly forms since before the 2016 presidential election—when the term “bigot” seemed to reenter the day-to-day lexicon of Americans. McClain has spent years digging through archives of civil rights and marriage law to uncover the meaning of bigotry—which Merriam-Webster defines as “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices”—and how it stokes the fires of gender, racial, and other forms of discrimination.
In her recently published book, Who’s the Bigot? Learning from Conflicts over Marriage and Civil Rights Law (Oxford University Press, 2020), McClain examines how political and legal disagreements over bigotry have helped change the course of history, and the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. She also delves into all the ways that bigotry, past and present, is shaping how Americans view religion, gender, and race today.
“People want to learn from the past and [how not to] repeat it,” McClain says. They also don’t want to “fail to recognize new forms of injustice.”
Here, McClain talks about her research on bigotry and some key cases now in front of the US Supreme Court that could redefine who bigots really are. An excerpt of her book is available here.
The post The word ‘bigot’ is back. Here’s why it’s so powerful appeared first on Futurity.
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