In the simplest terms, prejudice is simply an unexamined belief upon which we act. Prejudice can take the form of disliking someone for their race, religion, gender, sexual preference, body type, just about anything at all. Discounting another person for any reason based upon prejudice is detrimental to our own well-being. When we choose to ignore our own experiences in favor of someone else’s experience we are not living our lives, we are living someone else’s life. How can we be happy as ourselves when we do not even know who we are?
Prejudice does not exclude any race or ethnic background either. Many times in these posts I have written about how we cannot find something within another person which does not first exist in ourselves, so when another person suggests we are prejudice, it must also suggest that person is prejudice otherwise they would not see it in us.
We know that people of certain body types are less likely to be given pay raises, or for that matter even hired in the first place. We know that blonde people are more likely to be thought of as less capable. We know that people who speak with the slow drawl of the southern regions of the US are thought less intelligent when they find themselves in the northern regions just as young women are thought of as mothers-in-waiting regardless of their abilities. These are all forms of prejudice; unexamined reactions to visual cues. Of all the things we can overcome prejudice is one of the most essential to overcome because when we pre-judge anyone strictly on their heritage or other broad definition we fail to see them for what they are; valuable and important parts of humanity as a whole. No one life is more important than any other life.
