"your vocal opinions affect what others think and say"
What Blanchard puts forth here is that each and everyone of us have affects on others with what we say. His studies with his students proves this. His students would walk up to others and display bigotry and racial tendencies, and they found that the students they approached and asked how they felt about it, often displayed the same opinion as if it was the norm.
"few have vicariously experiences the pain felt by a friend who has suffered racial harassment"
This hit home with me because I would consider myself someone who is well intentioned and would like racial equality. What this means is that even though you are well intentioned and have friends of other ethnicities and so on so forth, you most likely have never felt any of the pains that they have experienced through racial thoughts and spoken word. I mean in my case this is right, I can not be fully aware and be fully in-tuned with the movement because of it. I have not had the chance to stand up for a friend who was experiencing prejudice and there for have never felt the pain of prejudice in any way shape or form and I am ignorant because of it.
people "do not acknowledge the important differences between the intentional behavior of the committed bigot and the inadvertent behavior of the profoundly inexperienced"
what it means is that there are people who are complete bigots and do not care to voice their racial opinion, while others are un-intentionally harming those around them just because they partake in daily society and what is contemporary racism. It is important to recognize the differences as you need to deal with each individual case in a different way and with different techniques. For instance I would consider myself an inexperienced individually and I need to be educated on what I should and should not say. I find myself referring to people of color as "those" people and non intentionally harming them. I found myself doing this on facebook. One of my cousins works in a group home with disabled adults and those with mental incapacity and we were having a conversation about him standing up for a group member there who was being threatened and punished by a worker there. I had said "good for you Ben, sticking up for those individuals who can't defend themselves". I had the best intentions with my thought and I assumed it was ok. But my aunt came back at me with they are not "those" people, they are just like us and are just unfortunate to be the way they are. It made me think about how I say things and refer to others.
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