Judgment and Prejudice

On the one hand, it's good that the Germans have accepted responsibility for the Nazi movement and are now reflexively opposed to prejudice.

Anti-Islam demonstrators were outnumbered by 10 to one in Cologne tonight as the city’s famous cathedral turned out its lights in a symbolic protest against the Pegida movement.

The so-called “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of the West” (Pegida) had planned to hold a march there following weekly rallies in Dresden but only 250 supporters showed up, compared to more than 2,000 counter-demonstrators.

They lined the Cologne’s largest bridge as the cathedral stood in darkness, holding placards reading "refugees welcome", "I heart immigration" and "no Nazis here".

On the other hand, prejudice is "pre-judgment," and being opposed to pre-judging someone or something should not require you to suspend post-judgment in the face of evidence. In the wake of an attack by more than a thousand Muslim refugees on German women, and the confession by police to victims that they cannot guarantee women's safety and that women should thus avoid the city center, it's not prejudice to oppose taking new refugees. It's not prejudice, but appropriate and rational judgment, to assert that this culture is not compatible with your values and that you don't want it in your country.

The inability to make considered, rational judgments because of a fear of prejudice is a category error. That is a quite serious philosophical mistake. It is perfectly possible to avoid prejudice without suspending one's faculty of judgment permanently. For example, you could elect to accept people who are Muslims and refugees if and only if they as individuals embrace your values. Some do, and some don't, and yes that may mean breaking up families in terms of whom you accept.

Normally we wouldn't want to do that on principle -- which, by the way, is another way of saying that we have pre-judged these situations have have a pre-judgment, a principle, we reflexively apply. Having principles is also a kind of prejudice, a pre-judgment. Sometimes principles have to be set aside based on the facts that make the cases unusual. In this case rational judgment may suggest it:

The horrifying story of an “honor killing” in Germany spotlights the sheer madness of importing millions of unvetted, unassimilated migrants.

The victim, a 20-year-old woman known as “Rokstan M,” is one refugee who had a strong case for asylum. She was gang-raped in Syria, emigrated to Germany two years ago, and found employment with the German government as a translator.

However, she strongly suspected her family wanted her dead for being “unclean,” and her suspicions appear to have been confirmed, as the German police believe her father and brothers slaughtered her with knives and buried her body in a garden, allegedly at the instruction of her mother.

Normally we wouldn't want to break up families. Here's a case in which it would have been a good thing for her to be separated from her mother and father and brother. She would have fit into German society quite well. They will never.

That's not prejudice, it's the judgment of reason applied to the truth of the facts.