Portland Examiner columnist Jenny Westberg claims the title belongs to bias against the mentally ill:
After years of inequality and hatred, many minority groups have won some respect. You would never, for instance, talk about your African American friends using a certain word starting with “N.”
But even in our enlightened age, many people refer to those with psychiatric disabilities as “crazies,” “nutcases,” “loony tunes,” “whack jobs,” “head cases,” “sickos,” “retards,” “flakes,” “schizos,” “weirdos” – and the list goes on.
I was not aware that the term “flake” referred to mental illness.
According to Suzanne Fields of the Jewish World Review, anti-Semitism is still very much in the running. Her article ends on a rueful and puzzling note:
The new anti-Semitism passes unnoticed among those who should know better. Writes Phyllis Chesler: “In a politically correct, multicultural world, anti-Semitism is the last acceptable prejudice.”
Even in America, the land of the free and the home of the bravest.
Though I had not heard of this publication before now, the tagline to this article explains: “Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider ‘must reading.'”
Another book on anti-Catholicism with the subtitle The Last Acceptable Prejudice: Mark S. Massa’s Anti-Catholicism in America.
Judging from an Amazon search, Catholics are the only ones staking out this territory in book form.
Another one from Ben Wolfson: author Geri Clark opines that suburbanism is the last acceptable prejudice. An example of the horrific treatment that awaits suburbanites in liberal cities:
Five years ago, when my husband and I announced we were taking our 18-month-old and leaving Manhattan for a quiet, woodsy southern New England town, our neighbors and friends were shocked. Many expressed concerns like, “But the suburbs are so homogeneous! Your kids won’t know anyone of color!” (Subtext: when they become skinhead racist Klan members you can blame living in Connecticut.)
And then there was, “Oh…you’re gonna get a case of affluenza. You know, when the community is so nice that the kids suffer.” And, “There’s no real community in the suburbs. It’s all nameless and disconnected.” And, “It’s nice…but it’s not the real world up there, you know.”
I never saw this onslaught coming. I thought that friends would be happy for us for finding another place we felt we could call home. That they would be glad that we would be a lot closer to my husband’s new job and his 75-minute-each-way commute would end.
But no. We got smacked with a feeling that we were selling out and making a huge mistake that would render us just pale suburban ghosts of our former selves.
It’s chilling, really.
Responding to a recent episode of Family Guy, blogger aethelread the unread argues that transphobia most deserves this blog’s title:
The major point I want to make here, though, is how revealing the Family Guy episode, and Seth MacFarlane’s defence of it, are of the extent of transphobia. I overstate my case a little in the title when I describe it as the last socially ‘acceptable’ prejudice; you’ll find some support in both right and leftwing circles for the idea that there ought to be legislation regulating female clothing – though only if the women concerned are muslim. But the extent to which MacFarlane feels safe articulating and defending transphobia reveals just how socially ‘acceptable’ it still is.
(For those who didn’t see it, the Family Guy episode features Brian the dog projectile vomiting for well over a minute straight upon learning that he has had sex with a trans woman.)
Twitterer Joe Marier points out that Philip Jenkins has written an entire book entitled The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice.
This reinforces my view that Catholics are far ahead of the curve in staking out the “last acceptable prejudice” claim.
Reader Ben Wolfson informs us of a Guardian article from last year discussing the scourge of gingerism. From the teaser:
They are teased, bullied – and heading for extinction. Simon Hattenstone (father of one redhead) asks whether gingerism remains the last acceptable prejudice?
Amazingly, the article does not mention South Park.
The Boston Globe reports on efforts to make discrimination based on looks illegal:
Part of the problem is the lack of consensus that any of this is a problem. “So you Want to Hire the Beautiful” ran the title of one Business Week column. “What’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong is the same thing that’s wrong with discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or gender. Prejudice based on looks rather than performance violates principles of equal opportunity and social justice that this nation has fought hard to establish. Beauty bias is the last frontier of acceptable bigotry. Except in a few localities, it is now perfectly legal. That needs to change. In schools and workplaces, people should be judged on how they perform, not how they look.
I hope my readers will indulge me for including a slight variation on the formula.
A review of the British television show Fat and Proud weighs in on our topic:
A size-acceptance activist (yes, really) is shown talking to women about body image and being happy with your size — wonder if she also deals with the vertically challenged or only the overweight? She says weight is the last socially acceptable prejudice in this country, but I’m not sure she’s right.
Of course, it’s widely acknowledged that having people dismiss a particular prejudice as unimportant or not very widespread is part and parcel of being the last acceptable prejudice.
According to Samuel Gregg, a blogger at the Acton Institute, anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice. Discussing a successful Catholic diocese in Paris, he says:
To be sure, this approach hasn’t converted everyone. It could also use refinement here and there. But it is having much more measurable success than all the progressivist alternatives combined, and doesn’t involve embracing a siege-mentality. That’s no small achievement in a Western Europe where “Christophobia” and anti-Catholicism has increasingly become a cultural norm, or, as some put it, the last acceptable prejudice.
It’s unclear if “Christophobia” is acceptable in other places; tread lightly outside Europe.
The Last Acceptable Prejudice 