Bigotry is voluntary, autism is not.
I’m going to be controversial and object to the statement that “bigotry is voluntary”. Most people don’t choose their beliefs, let alone reason themselves into or out of any particular one; it’s formed by one’s subconscious, based on one’s innate personality and many years of social influence, most of which is subtle and unnoticed. (Or, you know, kids parroting their parents’ blatant bigotry. But even that doesn’t always stick.) Reasoning does not create belief, merely justifies (or de-justifies) it.
Being self-aware enough to realize that one’s own beliefs are going to a dark and ugly place and then gradually self-correcting is either rare talent or a very underutilized ability.
Once fully established, *changing* one’s beliefs can theoretically be voluntary, but is not mentally or emotionally cost-free. Sometimes there’s also a social cost, though there can also be a social cost to not changing as well. On one end of the spectrum are beliefs, which, once consciously examined, don’t fit well within the rest of one’s worldview, and have a social cost to keeping them; these have low mental and emotional costs, yet still aren’t necessarily easy - one can always fall back to old patterns of thinking, especially if the old patterns are subtly reinforced.
At the other extreme is beliefs which form the bedrock of one’s identity and worldview. Trying to unravel those leads to Iä Cthulhu Fhtagn - in other words, severe psychological distress which may require long-term therapy and effectively having to rebuild one’s identity and worldview from the level of a young child. In most cases the cost is not nearly that high, but high enough that it can be a privilege to seriously contemplate rewiring one’s own subconscious. That’s assuming they even consciously desire to, which most don’t. And the vast majority of people definitely won’t just because some strangers said so.
(I’m not counting things which are not sincerely believed, but say that you believe out of social pressure. Those can be changed fairly easily, if you’re not sure what to believe otherwise.)
None of that is meant to suggest that the behavior of bigots is excusable, only the beliefs driving the behavior is nowhere near as “voluntary” as some people seem to think. And it doesn’t mean that bigots can’t *be* changed - provide high enough social costs, and provide enough visible counterexamples which render their beliefs untenable, and some of them will. But it won’t be voluntary on their part.