Everyone everywhere is prejudiced in some way or another, whether they realize it or not. It's not always a bad thing either. For example, you have a new neighbor move into your neighborhood. You find out that they served time for molesting children. So you make sure they are not around your children while alone. That is prejudice. You judged that person as an active threat to your children and have responded in what you believe to be an appropriate fashion. You did so without knowing them. But no one can truly fault you for that. You have no way of knowing whether they will harm your children or not, you have only their past actions to go by. It's only ever when the reaction to the information exceeds that which is reasonable. Keeping a former child predator away from your kids is reasonable. Keeping your kids away from the Muslim family that just moved in because terrorists! or whatever, is not. You grew up around black people who only ever spoke with the stereotypical black accent. There is nothing wrong with being surprised that a black man can speak with a different accent. It seem stupid to you now in hindsight. But if you had no experience with black people speaking with any other accent, it is understandable. It is not harmful either, it is neutral. Especially since you did not let it negatively impact your interaction with that person. I hate this idea that prejudice is always harmful. It's BS as I have pointed out above with my example of a person that had been convicted of sex crimes against kids. Furthermore there is a major difference between prejudice and bigotry. Bigotry always involves prejudice, but prejudice does not always involve bigotry. As with all things, prejudice in moderation is good, even beneficial. It is an extension of instinct. But it is very easy to let that get out of hand and become something harmful. Edit: One last thing. I notice in your post, KVN, that you mention color repeatedly but nothing else. It is very important to note that prejudice doesn't only exist for skin color, but can manifest in everything. Anytime you pass judgment on a person due to a small faucet of who they are it is prejudice.