We Can Make A Difference

Understanding Prejudice
by Kelson H.

Before people make judgments or come to conclusions about people, they should be informed about it. You should observe and examine evidence. Prejudice means " pre-judgment", or judging before you get the real facts. Prejudice is more an emotional process than it is a mental one, raising out of fear and insecurity. Education is the best cure to prejudice because it can take out attitudes out of the realm of emotion by grounding them in fact.

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The greater people are able to experience and understand people who our different from them, the more likely people are to realize that they are fundamentally like us even though they look different. The more students examine human motivations, we close the gap between " us and them".

While prejudice is focused as and attitude, discrimination is an act. Most of us usually put our irrational beliefs into actions - actions that effect the lives of other people in ways that can really be harmful to our society.

Studies show that children learn prejudicial attitudes at very young ages through cues from parents and other influences like the media. When children use racial slurs and hurtful languages, they do not want to be discriminatory. As the youth grows older, they usually cut down on the racial slurs because they find it socially unacceptable. But as they grow older some might become more hostile and negative to groups that are different than them. Children are not born to hate people that are different than they are but society usually causes them to hate those that are different from them.

A prejudiced person usually needs someone to talk to about beliefs about different groups. When we convince the youth that prejudce is irrational and hurtful, it becomes difficult for even one student to retain prejudicial beliefs.