While working a future blog entry about racism, I came upon an aspect that I hadn’t thought about much, perhaps because it’s almost never mentioned or described in popular media. It’s the fact that racism and other forms of bigotry don’t exist as binary, either-or propositions, all-good or all-bad scenarios. As much as we want the topic to be clear-cut — so it’s easier to say “I’m definitely not a racist” or “Ted is definitely a racist” — I don’t find it that simple.

This “pyramid of white supremacy”, purportedly endorsed by the Equality Institute, was found on Twitter. It illustrates something of what I’m trying to say in this entry.

I think most people are able to grasp that most moral questions and answers exist on a continuum, rather than as opposing sides of a great chasm — though I have known people who can’t understand this concept. I think many of these false dichotomies are preserved because we badly want to believe we’re not like them — the people on the other side of the divide, that in fact we can’t be like them.

Some parts of our societal institutions accept that there is a range, while others insist on drawing hard lines. Looking at legal codes throughout history, we see that punishments vary depending on the crime — some infractions invite only fines or warnings, while other crimes result in harsher and harsher penalties. (Imagine a legal code that was a simple either-or affair: either you are innocent of all crimes or you get the death penalty.)

Perhaps obviously, once we think about it, most forms of bigotry we can think of fall somewhere on a spectrum or (the word I prefer) continuum. In other words, there are bigoted acts that are worse than other bigoted acts.

Yet we see people on multiple sides of these discussions ignoring or denying this continuum. They insist there is a dichotomy, that there is acceptable behavior on one hand and unacceptable behavior on the other, that a particular act is either all good or all bad, and that there is no incremental nature to it.

It’s easier to show if I use extreme examples where we’ll all agree. For example, lynching is worse than telling a stereotyping joke about Black people. Or, let’s say, using a caricaturized Native American mascot for a sports team is not nearly as bad as U.S. Army soldiers slaughtering Native Americans because we want their land. This is not to say that the joke or the mascot is good or that they should be acceptable, but that they’re clearly less harmful than the lynching or genocide.

In conversations I’ve seen online, there is an immediate suspicion whenever such a continuum is mentioned. Those on the defensive against accusations of bigotry worry that the continuum is meant to place them on it somewhere. People doing the accusing worry that the continuum is meant to somehow excuse the accused. Neither is true. It simply describes reality more accurately. I don’t bring it up here in the hopes of excusing some acts, nor with the intention of indicting anyone.

I found this pyramid on Facebook more than a year ago. It was meant to express an idea similar to the one above, but its design is poor.

Not long ago, I discussed with a close friend the growing list of “canceled” celebrities. (Keep in mind that “canceling” only means “I won’t watch them anymore” — all of those celebrities still exist, still have followings, and are still wealthy.) She was of the mindset that A, B, and C should all be canceled — for various things they had said in public, evidence of apparent bigotry. I asked: if you had to be stranded on a deserted island, and you had to be accompanied by either A or B, who would you choose? She instantly chose A, and I asked why. She said because what A had done wasn’t as bad as B. Then I asked about B and C, and she quickly chose B for the same reason. Clearly what A had said was understood as casual. At worst, it was minimization of the Black experience. What B had done was startling, but it was a one-time thing and it was years ago. On the other hand, C has a continuous record of repeatedly supporting white supremacist ideology.

What is the point of insisting there’s a continuum instead of a dichotomy?

I think, internally, we can use it to self-evaluate. A dichotomy forces one to either admit to being a full-on bigot or excuse themselves as not a bigot; neither is helpful. With a continuum, we can admit that, yes, we have engaged in at least some of the behaviors and can work to improve toward the better end of the scale.

Externally, I think acknowledging a continuum of bigotry can be helpful for adjusting the (mostly social) punishment to fit the “crime”. Instead of only two options (follow/cancel, support/oppose), we have more ways to go.

Take my hypothetical A, B, and C celebrities above. They were actually Gina Rodriguez, Liam Neeson, and Candace Owens. The latter said the only problem with Hitler is that he invaded other countries; Owens has a history of denigrating women, claiming Black people are “pretending” to be oppressed, asserting that white supremacist groups aren’t a problem, and generally lying about liberalism and progressivism. She can be entirely opposed; there is little redeeming value. Neeson did something different. He admitted that he once looked for a random Black man to beat up because a friend was raped by a Black man; he said he already knows this was wrong and has grown past it. He’s not the same kind of problem that Owens is; he doesn’t have to be opposed quite as much; we can be wary and watch future behavior. Rodriguez, while advocating for women of color, was criticized for saying black women earn more than Latina women. (Which is actually true, at least according to some data — PDF.) That remark doesn’t deserve opposition at all, because at worst it was misunderstood as referring to actresses specifically and at best it was drawing from a different data set than her detractors. She’s actually on our side, man — and was making the very same point as her detractors (that women of color aren’t paid nearly as much as white women or white men.

The same idea holds true for me in other forms of bigotry besides racism, whether the sentiments are anti-LGBTQ, religious bigotry, or something else. Say someone uses a term generally understood to be offensive to gay men. Whether intentional or otherwise, the act isn’t as harmful as, say, actively advocating for a loss of rights for gay men. Clearly, by saying so, I don’t mean to excuse the offensive term; the person using it can do better. But I am saying that it’s counterproductive to punish a (possibly innocent) word with the same degree of severity that we oppose much worse acts.