American Prejudice

Prejudice will always be apart of human nature. Prejudice is when one has a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Many citizens in the world do not realize they demonstrate prejudice in their life. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee illustrates prejudice through racism, social class, and sexism through certain characters, to emphasize not to judge a person before being placed in their shoes.

The patterns of majority and minority interaction eventually play into prejudice and bigotry themes. Prejudice views differ from bigotry. In some form, a comparison can be drawn between ethnocentric ideas and prejudice ideas. When someone is ethnocentric, they believe their own values and customs to be superior to other cultures. From these ethnocentric ideas, which have been displayed throughout history, prejudice ideas occur. Prejudice ideas occur when a person makes a pre-judgment or assumption in regards to another ethnicity. Therefore, when one makes a pre-judgment they assume that they are unlike the group that they are judging. Bigotry on the other hand plays into the idea of discrimination in the sense that people are not approving of a particular minorities lifestyle or cultural values. Lecture number five does a nice job explaining how all three of these concepts work, “People tend to justify discrimination by rationalizing it on the ground that those whom they discriminate against are less worthy of respect or fair treatment than people like themselves” (Class notes, Lecture 5). An example of modern prejudice ideas or bigotry can be seen within how western countries discuss people of Islamic faith.

In today’s society, we face prejudice every day in many forms. Most people in today’s society have either been victims of prejudice or are guilty of exhibiting prejudice towards others.

It has been thoroughly thought over what current topic or issue that people experience in most environments today, at both a micro and macro level that would be able to be examined and have come to the decision of looking at the most widely discussed subject, prejudice. All people are affected by prejudice in one way or another and it can impact on people's lives depending on what form it has taken. Also to be able to acknowledge that all people can be prejudices and see this is the first step to overcoming it.. The question that has been decided upon is that of “What types of prejudice do we see commonly today and how do they affect an individual at a micro and macro level?”

Prejudice is when we have a preconceived opinion about someone or a group of people that is formed without knowledge, or even a real understanding about them.

Prejudice is an opinion in which is not based on any reasoning, and may cause harm. Prejudice can be seen just about anywhere, and it affects our daily lives. There are many different ways a person can show prejudice beliefs, but why do they believe things they have never experience? Some may say it’s something personal with one’s self that causes prejudice thoughts, or some may think it their surroundings contribute as a motive.

Prejudice is “an adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge” (Merriam); according to Lystra Moore Richardson of Yale University: “prejudice… was part of the very fiber of Southern life [during the Great Depression].” With these two pieces of information, it is derived that people formed judgments and opinions of a person without just

Prejudice has created discrimination in the United states and in other countries. Discrimination can be created by multiple reasons for example race, gender, religion, and other categorical groups. A great example of prejudice behavior was in World War II, when the Jews were discriminated against

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

Prejudice is something which has affected everyone at one time or another. It is like looking out a frosted window and not seeing a clear picture. When people look through a frosted window they sometimes see a blurred vision of the world outside. Sometimes we see people as very different from ourselves when really they are just a very little bit different from us. We can even see someone as an enemy instead of for who they really are. These narrow minded views in our society are prevalent, even though most of the time they are

Unfortunately due to our past history, discrimination had been among us from since decades. Discrimination and prejudice would probably be among us until the end of the world. Prejudice and discrimination is an action that treats people unfairly because of their membership in a particular social group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs to rather on that individual. It is an unfair treatment to a person, racial group, and minority. It is an action based on prejudice.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible. (Maya Angelou) By definition prejudice is a preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience. Prejudice to others is hate, judgement, and evil. The effects of prejudice are shown in the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the play The Merchant of Venice, and the tragedy known as the Holocaust. Prejudice affected all people differently, but one thing is true for all; prejudice is crippling and disables those who experience it from being who they truly are and doing as they please.

Prejudice can be overcome through education, equal status intergroup contact, and working together to achieve a specific goal. For instance, education and learning about people who are different (the out-group) and noticing similarities instead of differences can combat prejudice. Also, equal status contact has been shown to reduce prejudice and discrimination. Equal status contact requires the different groups to all be in the same situation with neither group holding power over the other. In equal status contact, personal involvement with people from another group must be cooperative and occur when all groups are equal in terms of power or status to have a positive effect on reducing prejudice. Also, having people work together to solve a problem because each person has an important key to solving the problem, creating a mutual interdependence, helps reduce prejudice. This technique is called the jigsaw

There are many different examples of prejudice in our world today, such as discrimination against race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and any other bigoted beliefs about a group of people. Prejudice is a belief that a specific group of people is inferior to another. Prejudice is not based off of actual evidence or experience, and often shows in the form of stereotypes. No person is born discriminatory, it is just a matter of what they are taught and how they are raised. If a parent or any other significant person in a child’s life has certain views about a subject it is very likely the child will have the same beliefs as them. Another factor in why prejudice exists is society. If someone grows up in a community where discriminatory views are common they will also most likely adopt those views too.

Prejudice is the negative attitude based on false generalizations about members of different racial and ethnic groups. From prejudice, discrimination is born. We all are guilty of discriminating other people, but one can only speculate the factors that bring about this hatred towards one another. Although a single cause cannot account for the presence of racism, factors such as socialization, self-justification, and competition are a few human attributes that lead to acts of racial discrimination.