It's odd to attach "contributing to toxic divisiveness" to someone pattern-matching, rather than the people creating the pattern.
It's all signaling & identification, so if you don't want people seeing a Thin Blue Line flag & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the thin-blue-line people & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
> if you don't want people seeing a predominantly black neighborhood & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the people living in black neighborhoods & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.
Do you still think there's nothing wrong with prejudice, or in your words, pattern-matching?
The difference that hasn’t been addressed, which to me is fundamental, is that we’re talking specifically about behaviors done intentionally whose purpose is to signal membership into specific tribes.
I don’t know what the right way to address this because it’s become extremely common to not organize under explicit banners but instead make your membership known by not subtle dog whistles to maintain, again, not subtle plausible deniability. Like everyone does it! I could fill your screen with just the liberal/left/blue whistles I know about. This will always suck for the people who aren’t announcing their membership but the alternative is being ignorant to the groups de facto organizing.
> we’re talking specifically about behaviors done intentionally whose purpose is to signal membership into specific tribes.
Sure, but how do you know what tribes a person identifies with, if multiple groups use the same signals? How do you know an american flag means a proud racist or a proud immigrant (remember citizenship ceremonies are often huge accomplishments that immigrants deeply cherish). How do you know certain clothing styles mean somebody is a proud gang member or just a regular person who's a proud fan of hip hop culture? That's the point of my criticism. I personally am all for taking caution based on prejudice. I'm against people who are only okay with it if it's prejudice against people they dislike, but raise a fuss if people have prejudice against people they like.
Consistency is overrated. I could substitute words in anybody's statement to make them sound terrible.
And besides, I specified 'signaling & identification'. I may have missed where people were being born with thin-blue-line flags as birthmarks.
On the other hand, maybe you've got a point. I should be able to walk into any gun shop in the country with a "John Brown was justified, Sherman didn't go far enough" t-shirt & not see so much as a dirty look.
It's all signaling & identification, so if you don't want people seeing a Thin Blue Line flag & going "maybe that's not somewhere I want to be", talk with the thin-blue-line people & get them to stop doing the things that make some people want to avoid them.