Prejudice

We spend our life judging other people based on our ideas on how they look, what they did in the past, what they eat, how they speak, where they are from, or even what other people think about them, but in fact without having much idea about them. We usually think that these prejudices disappear when we know someone in a better way but although we may not notice it, the image that we have of someone after knowing him is still strongly influenced by things he cannot choose or that are not directly related to him. 

According to the dictionary a prejudice is a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience”. They affect our society a lot and the way in which we see people. For example when we see someone who wears glasses, some people tend to think that that person is more intelligent than he wasn’t wearing them, and although it is an old stereotype, people frequently use glasses to have more chances in job interviews.

The origin of prejudices is stereotypes and they are caused because of generalization. Stereotypes can be defined as fixed general ideas established by a society towards certain types of people or certain characteristics in them. They are often used and strengthened by films, series or stories in which their use is very frequent. Sometimes they are used in a supposedly funny way or as a method to make the narratives of a story easier to follow, but the problem with them is that in many cases they can be offensive and lead to prejudices and discrimination, which is the worst consequence of them.

Maybe the clearer example of this is racism, which is the discrimination and contempt to people with physical or cultural characteristics that are different from your own. This discrimination is caused by anyone who only accepts people who are “like him” considering himself better than people from other racial groups.

Although nowadays we are more open minded and prejudices don’t influence us as much as in the past, they are still very present in people and society. In our everyday life many people suffer discrimination as a result of them. As Einstein said:  “What a sad era when it is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice”.

People have usually more prejudices and are less open minded when they have less experience with people different from them, because they have false and general ideas as a consequence of stereotypes and the lack of a real contact with the ones that they tend to judge. This shows that when you open your mind you realize that in fact prejudices are most of the times false and that it’s not fair to judge anyone without really knowing him.