Easy To Miss

For more than a year, I have been donating my time to a news site whose journalism I read and respect.

You may not know this type of news organisation exists anymore – it employs journalists who investigate, it does not use clickbait and it does not tell you how long it will to take for you to read an article.

On a typical weekday morning, I will read as many articles as I can for an hour, just after the site posts its articles for the morning, and then send them any recommendations for corrections.

One morning, I came across this sentence:

Its fury and frustration at what it saw as the inaction of the past meant that ministers had little trust in the officials advising them, preferring instead to rely on their own untested hunches and uniformed prejudices.

(Extract from a pre-proofread article)

Shortly after I sent them my recommendations, the news site corrected the error.

A better type of prejudice?

The typo got me thinking.

Is a prejudice better if it is an informed prejudice?

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines prejudice as “an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge”. It seems to leave the door open for an unreasonable opinion to be arrived at with sufficient thought or knowledge, and to be judged slightly better because of that.

I would have thought that prejudice is never good, whether informed or uninformed, and that the last half of the definition adds nothing.

And, although the writer clearly intended the word “uninformed”, there is uniformed prejudice in our society, isn’t there? A prejudice that sometimes flows both ways.

Easy to miss

When reading or writing, it is so easy to miss an error like that, isn’t it? Doesn’t the average reader read on the basis of the appearance of words and the collection of letters in the aggregate that make up those words, not the individual letters in the words themselves? Something like that.

In any case, it is easy to miss the missing ‘n’, yet still understand that the writer is talking about prejudices that are uninformed.

(In fact, I’m willing to bet that some of you had to re-read that quoted sentence to find the typo.)

“The military shouldn’t have children”

On a hunch, I conducted a search using the phrase “uniformed prejudices”. What a plethora of examples that uncovered!

Do it and see for yourself.

I found a conversation thread from 2011 on Mumsnet titled “The military shouldn’t have children”. Those arguing the “for” position opined that members of the armed forces posted on active duty should not be having children because they can’t be present for them.

Many commenters defended the members of the military who chose to have children.

One person – I don’t know if they were for or against – simply expressed an internet-age-old complaint, bemoaning the fact that:

“…sometimes it isn’t a discussion, with the opinions of other [sic] taken on board and considered and a valid response given. Some posters just stick with their uniform prejudices and just keep banging away repeating themselves and not reading the replies.”

(Comment on Mumsnet)

Uniform prejudices, literally. How delightfully, unintentionally appropriate!

Another online conversation in the comments section of a newspaper article:

Peter, unfortunately for you, your uniformed prejudices have already put you in a position that your comments are not listened to, even when you have a valid point. Something about a boy crying wolf.

(A comments forum somewhere on the internet)

Response:

“Uniformed” prejudices. Preferring naked prejudices, I make it a point to never dress them up in uniforms. Why don’t you make another attempt to make some sense. That way your comments will also be listened to.

(Same place)

I could go on.

Peter’s critic did, in fact, go on: “One thousand apologies oh great orator of the English language. I meant to say “uninformed” but evidently you needed my assistance to figure that out…”

From recollection, I think the thread stopped there. Personally, If I were Peter, I would have responded by pointing out that, technically, “orator” was not the right word to use in this context, as theirs was a written conversation, not spoken.

“O Great Scribe” or “O Great Wordsmith” would have been preferable.

Why can’t we all just get along?

Wouldn’t it be nice if people could just get along? Not just in the world of online bickering, where a return to civility would be nice. Although, comments sections would be far less colourful and less entertaining to read.

But, following a year in which prejudice by people in uniform as well as against them reared its ugly head around the world in ways difficult to ignore, wouldn’t the world be a better place if uniformed prejudice – whichever way it might flow, and whatever the reasons for it – became a thing of the past?