Critical Thinking Gone Out the Window

Growing hate groups blame Obama and Latino immigrants for the failing US economy.

This is a terrific article, referencing the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Year of Hate" report as well as FBI statistics and observations from a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. If you don't believe that this increase in hate crimes is taking place, look up those reports and statistics!

In any case, these hate groups are violating some major guidelines of critical thinking:

Guideline 1: Ask questions; be willing to wonder. Why are the people in hate groups so willing to believe what they are taught? How is it solving their problems?

Guideline 2: Define the problem. If the people who join hate groups followed Guideline 1, they would soon have to follow Guideline 2. The problem may not be immigrants, but immigration policy itself. The problem may not be immigrants "taking" jobs, but Americans "rejecting" them, or Americans simply not qualified to do those jobs. If they could define the problem with more clarity, these people would busily be engaged in overthrowing the government, not attacking minorities!

Guideline 3: Examine the evidence. The US economy was failing before Obama got into office. In fact, the US economy has been failing since the 1980s!

4: Analyze assumptions and biases. The hate groups are making a big assumption that Latino immigrants are "taking" American jobs and not paying taxes. The hate groups do not like Latinos to begin with, and as a result they are allowing their bias to dictate their beliefs.

5: Avoid emotional reasoning. It would be interesting to do a study on the members of hate groups to determine how many of them have been cited for violence due to anger. Also, are these people in hate groups spewing hatred simply because it makes them feel good?

6. Don't use either/or thinking or overgeneralize. Do white supremacist groups believe that all "white" "Aryan" people are naturally good, while all "non-white" people are naturally bad?

7. Consider other interpretations. What type of information about the economy, immigration, and up-to-date government legislation does the average person receive? Adults make choices as to what they will believe as true or not.