do open minds exist?

in the comments attached to a previous post, lundgren said this:

"Sweet. Once race and sexuality became off limits, I thought there'd never be another large group to discriminate against."

to which i say, in my best chris rock voice, "sheeeeyet."

every one of us who posts here displays deep and sometimes vicious bias on a regular basis. we discriminate every day in ways subtle and overt.

an open mind requires a lot more than being theoretically cool with gay people and black folks. it also requires acknowledging that george w. and drunk college jocks and suv-driving suburbanites are human beings. it's easy to dismiss disagreeable, mean-spirited, selfish ideas by negating the humanity of the people who hold them. it's far more thoughtful and honest and difficult to accept the humanity of a person despite their offensive qualities.

i know liberals--shit, i'm one of them--who are so bent on being "tolerant" or "colorblind" (and if there ever was a stupid, racist term, then "colorblind" is it) or "open-minded" that they're far more rigid and judgmental than some of the conservatives who they de-humanize at every opportunity.

i internally criticize people all day for their taste in music, the cars they drive, their race, their accent, the clothes they wear, the expressions on their faces, the people they hang out with, etc. i don't think i'm the only one. and i don't think i or anyone else is immune from such prejudicial, snobbish, insecure, self-righteous judgment.

open mindedness doesn't mean agreeing with every idea and loving every person; it does mean avoiding the same sort of lazy judgment it's meant to avoid.

we might all be better off if we just admitted that open minds don't exist; that we've all got biases, even though we'd rather not have them, and even if we're thoughtful enough to fight against them.