Prejudice means any unfavorable or hostile opinion or a feeling towards someone formed before knowing anything about them. Prejudice can also include an idea about someone without knowledge or information about them or without any real thought or reason gone into the idea.

Prejudice can also mean having an opinion about something or someone without knowing anything about it. Or having an opinion based upon a previous experience you carry with you and aim at others.

How does prejudice come about?

Prejudice is a premature judgment, a positive or a negative attitude towards a person or group of people which is not based on objective facts. These prejudgments are usually based on stereotypes which are oversimplified and overgeneralised views of groups or types of people, i.e. a particular group of people are dirty or thieves.

A prejudgment about someone or something may also be based on an emotional experience we have had with a similar person, sort of our own personal stereotype. This means that we generalise one experience in our lives about a particular group and use it to paint everyone from that group the same.

Stereotypes also provide us with role expectations, i.e. how we expect other people or groups to behave and act towards others. Our culture has hundreds of ready-made stereotypes, for example: leaders are dominant, arrogant men; teenagers with hoodies are criminals etc. Most of these role expectations are false and only work to reinforce our negative stereotypes and over-generalised beliefs.

The impact Prejudice can have

When we are prejudiced, we violate three standards: reason, justice, and tolerance. We are unreasonable if we judge others negatively without evidence or in spite of positive evidence or use stereotypes without allowing for individual differences.

We are unjust if we discriminate and pay men a third more for the same work as women or select more men than women for leadership positions.

We are intolerant if we reject or dislike people because they are different, e.g. of a different religion, different ethnic group, different sexuality or have a different set of values.

Recognising prejudice

As soon as you hear people making comments like, ‘all men’, ‘all people of one race’, ‘all girls’, ‘all boys’, ‘all people with one ear bigger than the other’, or whatever, then you can tell that there is some prejudice there. Or at the very least they are over generalising about someone and can easily slip into stereotyping people and groups and not having the chance to understand the truth about them. After all, how can someone know all people who….? It doesn’t make any sense.

If you catch yourself thinking stuff like this, using the word ‘all’ or generalising about particular groups or people, then think again. Because the chances are, you’ll be missing the point.

Links

www.understandingprejudice.org/

The understanding prejudice website has been designed for students, teachers, and others interested in the causes and consequences of prejudice, and has loads of resources and links to other websites about prejudice and social justice.

www.beyondprejudice.com/

Beyond prejudice also has lots of information, resources, advice and explains a bit more about prejudice.