--- Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> happened. Those who would speak said (
> paraphrasing) "it was one thing
> to work side by side with blacks on the assembly
> line, but something
> entirely different, and not acceptable to live next
> door to blacks."
>
[WS:] Interesting story. A friend of mine told me a story from her childhood in which many people in her neighborhood (southern CA) who were generally liberal and supportive of the Civil Rights Movement bitterly opposed school integration in their own neighborhood. I heard a somewhat similar story about Montgomery County in MD - which is the most progressive/liberal county in MD, and yet it has one of the most gerrymandered and segregated school districts.
Several years ao I met a white construction worker from W. Virginia in a laundroamt in a 'hood' of Baltimore. This guy first engaged in a racist diatribe commenting on the neighborhood (it was pretty run down), and then said that he works mostly with Black workers and he is not prejudiced against them at all. It was the quality of the neighborhood that made him "scared" (he puit it.)
What I find intersting in these stories is not the purported hypocrisy i.e. publicly saying one thing and doing something else (that would be very un-intersting), but that they seemningly apply diffrent cognitive frames to different situations e.g. work vs. neighborhood. I strongly suspect that these people are genuinely anti-discrimination in one context and pro-discrimination in another context. This is nothing unusual from a cognitive science point of view, as different social contexts invoke different cognitive frames, and consequently different thinking (e.g. being pro-life and pro-death penalty, but in diffrent contexts.)
I am just curious what kind of thinking is behind this contradiction i.e. why it seems ok for some to work with people of diffrent ethnicity but not to live with them. Any insights?
Wojtek
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