Reflection 10

What is prejudice? Does everyone one show signs of prejudicial behavior? The article Understanding Prejudice suggests that prejudice is a learned behavior. I would have to agree. I feel this way because usually when you see a prejudice child, there is a prejudice parent right in front of them. They were taught to act in a prejudicial fashion because of their parents. As everyone knows a young child is a sponge and they soak up everything you see or do. A child will especially imitate the actions of a parent and have that action become a part of their personality. This also goes for attitudes as well and as I stated earlier, that is the reason it is not surprising to see a child acting in the same prejudicial way the child is.
To answer the first that I asked in this reflection, (what is prejudice) I would have to say that it is a judgment about a race that is negative and puts your race on a pedestal in comparison the that race. An example of this is the prevalent stereotype that white people are smarter than black people. I also would like to state that not all white people believe and I know black people do not believe that all white believe this. Because of this we had slavery in America and we were not treated like humans. Also, because of this we had segregation. Black people were not good enough to drink from the same water fountain as whites.
To answer the second question, (does everyone show sighs of prejudice), I would have to say know. We must remember that prejudice is a learned behavior so if someone has not witnessed or have been told about prejudicial actions or thought they will not act according. I would say that prejudice is the single most easily accessible intangible that there is. The reason I say this because it is all around us and sometimes it has nothing to do with the parents. We see prejudice when we turn on the TV. It is on the news and in shows. Every time I watch the news I see the mug shot of a black teen who recently robbed a liquor store or I see the black drug dealer on the show of the all white academics. That is why I believe that it is sometimes a hard thing not to learn prejudices, which are detrimental to our society. This is also the reason it is our responsibility to negate these prejudices through education and nonjudgmental thought.