Everybody’s Prejudiced

Including the Man Who Wrote This

I will put mine on the table before I ask about yours

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411 pages · Paperback ISBN 978-1-972810-71-2 · ebook ISBN 978-1-972810-72-9

411Pages

33Chapters

1Author who goes first

0Comfortable conclusions

I will put mine on the table before I ask about yours

That is the deal. The only way this book earns the right to say what it is going to say is if the person writing it goes first.

I prefer women doctors. Women bankers. Women in customer service. Given equivalent credentials I lean toward the woman almost every time, and I have done this for most of my adult life. I have justified it various ways: more thorough, more attentive, more patient with difficult people.

Maybe that holds as a pattern across my own experience. What I have never done is examine honestly whether my experience proves what I think it proves, or whether I am giving a flattering name to something that works the same way any other bias works. The name I give it is informed preference. The accurate name is prejudice. I own it.

I start there because it is the most flattering thing I am about to tell you, and flattering is a good place to start. The rest is less comfortable.

What is inside

Going first

The author’s own prejudices, named
Informed preference and what it really is
Why the confession has to come before the argument
The reader’s turn

How it forms

What childhood installs
Experience as evidence, and its limits
Pattern recognition doing something else
The stories we use to license it

Where it operates

Hiring, medicine, lending and policing
The bias you would defend in public
The one you would not
Institutions that encode it

What to do

Examining a belief you hold
The difference between changing and performing change
Living with what you cannot fully remove
Why nobody gets to opt out

Who this is for

Worth your time if

You are willing to examine your own before examining anyone else’s
You want an argument rather than an accusation
You are tired of the subject being handled dishonestly
You can read four hundred pages that do not flatter you

Not for you if

You want confirmation that you are one of the good ones
You want a political position defended
You want an academic treatment
You believe you do not have any

Why me

Richard Lowe, the Writing King

I go first in this book, at some cost, because a book on this subject written by somebody claiming to stand outside it would be worthless. Thirty-three years in corporate America gave me plenty to examine, in hiring rooms and elsewhere.

Questions people ask

Isn’t a white man the wrong person to write a book about prejudice?

Lowe addresses that directly in the book’s opening. Prejudice is often framed as something white people observe in others or hold against others, never something aimed at them. That framing is part of what the book argues against. White people, men, Christians, working-class people, the old, the disabled, and veterans all experience prejudice, the same mechanism operating in every direction. Writing the book honestly required someone willing to go first with their own biases before asking anyone else to examine theirs. He qualified on every count.

Is this a left-wing or right-wing book?

Neither. It is deliberately agenda-free. The book applies the same standard to prejudice regardless of who holds it or who it is aimed at, which means it will frustrate anyone looking for a tidy political team to root for. It examines race, gender, religion, class, age, and disability with the same lens, and it treats DEI as something that got parts right and parts wrong rather than as a cause to defend or attack.

Is the author a sociologist or psychologist?

No, and he says so plainly. He is not an academic of any kind. The qualification he claims is sixty-plus years of observation, watching how prejudice works in real rooms with real people, from multiple directions, as both the person holding it and the person it was aimed at. Where he cites research, the research is real and represented accurately. Where he is stating an opinion, he tells you it is an opinion.

Does the book offer anything practical, or just analysis?

The final section is entirely about what rational people do to reduce prejudice, in themselves and in the rooms they walk into. It covers contact, holding the line, and the slow work of changing a mind starting with your own. The book is honest that this work is unglamorous and that the mechanism never fully goes away, but it is clear that prejudice can be reduced by people who understand what they are dealing with.

Also in Enemies of You

The Enshittification of America

How Good Businesses Were Taken Apart

The Death of Thinking

What Outsourcing Judgment Costs

The Birth of the Augmented Human

What Goes Right When You Use AI Properly

The Emasculation of America

What Bezmenov Described and Nobody Acted On

The Villainization of America

Why the Story We Tell Ourselves Matters

Stuck in the Middle

Wars, Weapons, and the Next Thirty Years

Turn Off the TV, Get Off Your Ass, and Do Something

Getting Your Time Back From the Screens

Everybody’s prejudiced

The useful question is which of yours you have never looked at.

BUY FROM INGRAMSPARK AMAZON KOBO READ THE INTRODUCTION TABLE OF CONTENTS

Paperback and ebook.

Filed underCritical Thinking People Logical Fallacies Personal Growth

Introduction

Everybody’s Prejudiced

Let me save you the trouble of wondering where I’m coming from. I’m going to put my own prejudices on the table before I ask you to examine yours. That’s the deal. The only way this book earns the right to say what it’s going to say is if the person writing it goes first.

This book was written by a Christian white man. I want to address that directly, because prejudice is often portrayed as something white people observe in others, study from a distance, or experience only as the people who hold it rather than the people it is aimed at. That framing is wrong, and it is part of what this book is arguing against.

White people experience prejudice. Men experience prejudice. Christians experience prejudice. Working-class people experience prejudice. Old people experience prejudice. People with disabilities experience prejudice. Veterans experience prejudice. The same process operates in every direction. Pretending otherwise does not make it untrue. It just makes it invisible to the people who most need to see it.

I am writing this book because I have experienced prejudice from multiple directions, held prejudice in multiple directions, and spent decades watching the same mechanism produce harm regardless of which way it was pointed. I wanted to write an honest book about that, agenda-free, applying the same standard no matter who held the bias or who it was aimed at. That required someone willing to go first with their own prejudices before asking anyone else to examine theirs. I qualified on every count.

One more thing. I am not a sociologist, a psychologist, a researcher, or an academic of any kind. I am a person. I have the same brain producing the same automatic judgments that every other person has. I have lived inside the same mess everyone else is living inside. The research in this book is real, and I have tried to represent it accurately. But the engine of the book is not research. It is observation, sixty-plus years of watching how this works in actual rooms with actual people.

That is the only qualification I am claiming. It turns out to be enough.

I want to address that directly, because prejudice is often portrayed as something white people observe in others, study from a distance, or experience only as the people who hold it rather than the people it is aimed at. That framing is wrong, and it is part of what this book is arguing against.

Everybody’s Prejudiced

A Note on the Author
Introduction: I’ll Go First
Part One: How It Gets In
Chapter 1: Installed Before You Can Question It
Chapter 2: The Wiring — Tribalism, the Brain, and Why This Never Goes Away
Chapter 3: Small Cruelties
Chapter 4: Culture, Religion, and the Air You Breathe
Chapter 5: The Stories We Were Handed
Part Two: What It Looks Like
Chapter 6: Race
Chapter 7: Gender
Chapter 8: Religion
Chapter 9: Class
Chapter 10: Age
Chapter 11: Disability
Part Three: How It Survives
Chapter 12: How Prejudice Survives
Chapter 13: DEI, Good Intentions, and What Actually Works
Part Four: The Full Count
Chapter 14: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Chapter 15: The Body
Chapter 16: The Prejudices Nobody Names
Chapter 17: From the Inside, and From the Side
Chapter 18: What Trauma Builds
Chapter 19: When the Mechanism Runs Free
Part Five: What Rational People Do
Chapter 20: Contact
Chapter 21: The Veterans — Holding the Line
Chapter 22: The Only Prejudice I Can Defend
Chapter 23: Claudia
Epilogue: The Only Prejudice That Makes Sense
Notes and Sources
About This Series
Enemies of You Series
Index

Everybody’s Prejudiced

I will put mine on the table before I ask about yours

What is inside

Who this is for

Why me

Questions people ask

Also in Enemies of You

Everybody’s prejudiced

Introduction

Everybody’s Prejudiced

Table of contents

Everybody’s Prejudiced

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