Can prejudice lay dormant in us all?

[kvnchrist]

I have always kept the idea that I was fair and impartial to everyone and don't have a prejudicial bone in my body. I remember priding myself with the fact that the church I used to go to, a Jehovahs Witness church allowed anyone, no matter what color they were to openly attend meetings and become a JW.

I remember my shock as windows were busted out of cars and tires flattened by those who lived in the neighborhood who hated people of color. I remember cleaning egg of the front door to the church and thinking how insane these people were to actually hate someone for no reason, what-so-ever.

I went through my childhood and the beginning of my adult thinking how wise I was because, to me I was pure as the driven snow as far as prejudism. I had lived in a black neighborhood as I grew up and had black friends That whole delusion came crashing down in the time it takes to wink your eye.

I remember while I was over in Germany, we were on a trip to Norway and had entered a museum. We had gathered around the entrance and waited for our guide to get there.

I remember very well that when our guide got there he was a black man and when he opened his mouth he spoke English with a thick Englishman's accent that simply blew me off my chair.

I was so used to the way I had heard black people spoke with a slight Southern accent that it never occurred to me that a black man could speak any other way.

This understanding really brought home how full of it I was and that I had just supposed that a black man would speak the way I was used to hearing

That day I understood just how embarrassed a person can get when they claim they are above the idiocy of pre judging another person before you meet them.

I was wondering if we all have a little prejudism in ourselves and If so that only appears at the worst times imaginable.

[Vagrant0]

Prejudice comes from the differences between people; be them social, grographical, cultural, financial, belief based, or self imposed. The greater the difference, the less likely the chances for open interaction, the greater chance for ignorance and hatred to take root. The only solution is to allow yourself to be vulnerable to the understanding of others while also allowing them the chance to understand you. However as we cannot realistically understand all those we encounter, or accept them for their faults and offenses, there will always be some degree of prejudice as long as those differences exist.

[Syco21]

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.

Edited July 5, 2014 by Syco21

[QQuix]

I consider racial and social prejudice as a [bad] side effect of a deeper prejudice 'engine' we have in our gens.

 

Fantasize this: one of our ancestors was the first human that met a lion in the wild. He had no built-in prejudice and went "Here, kitty, kitty!". The lion ate him. Of course, his companions did not repeat the mistake and taught their children. Over many other of this bad experience, over generations, over the millennia, this prejudice made its way into our genes, so, today, if you see a cat showing its teeth, you instinctively know if it has an aggressive behavior or it is just yawning.

So, today, our genes carry this and may other 'knowlege' our ancestors gathered.

 

Without this prejudice the human race would be long gone.

 

Lets just hope that we will learn how to, consciously, separate the good prejudice from the bad and, over time, get this into our genes.

[MajKrAzAm]

I remember my shock as windows were busted out of cars and tires flattened by those who lived in the neighborhood who hated people of color. I remember cleaning egg of the front door to the church and thinking how insane these people were to actually hate someone for no reason, what-so-ever.

 

When did you grow up; the 1950s?

[Aurielius]

LMAO....I did grow up in the fifties and my view is that one is to a large extent a creature of your generation and the country you grew up in. You may superimpose later values but your base conceptions of the world are the ones imprinted in your youth. Thomas Aquinas said " Give me a child to the age of ten and I will mold him for life"

[kvnchrist]

 

I remember my shock as windows were busted out of cars and tires flattened by those who lived in the neighborhood who hated people of color. I remember cleaning egg of the front door to the church and thinking how insane these people were to actually hate someone for no reason, what-so-ever.

 

When did you grow up; the 1950s?

 

 

 

I grew up in the 70's and lived in a black neighborhood. My brother and I were two of the 3 white persons that went to but grade school and the first 6 moths of high school.

 

The accents don't change with time. It changes with territory.

[rizon72]

I think we all have some form of prejudices in us. Many days we never come into contact with others who might reveal that prejudice.

[milogrim]

Pre-judging things is a natural reaction most mammals have. It serves us well in nature. When we encounter something that we can't identify or relate to we evaluate it with extreme caution and make guesses to mitigate any bad results.

 

Not being able to identify or relate with someone can have bad results if no understanding is reached. Cause like Yoda said, what you don't understand, you'll fear, and what you fear you'll hate, or something like that.

 

So prejudices are natural and thankfully so, or foolish humans would have died off long ago trying to pet the cuddly looking lions and bears. But unresolved they can lead to racism. Which is a completely irrational line of thinking. But this is not so if you travel to a land of different people, different customs, and different values be prepared to make quick and defensive pre-judgements about them. It's a safety mechanism, and it there for good reason, lions and bears aren't the most dangerous mammal out there.

[Deleted54170User]

At the time I had a lack of experience for separating peoples differences. Learning about the word prejudice; I wasn't being prejudice when I learned the word and asked what it meant. Another male who told me about a book called the Mountain Man, clearly pounced on innocence and said to me, "I'm not prejudice! I just don't like people who are prejudice!"

 

Then he laughed at his own words.