Be Aware and Beware of Your Prejudices

We all have our prejudices. It comes with the territory of being human. Prejudices can be useful and time-saving, like a habitual way of thinking and acting. But they are also dangerous. A prejudice is a premature, preconceived judgment made about an entire population of people, places, and things—on the basis of a limited sample. More specifically, painfully, and socially costly, it is “An unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge.” (Cambridge Dictionary.)

Prejudices adhere not only to individuals but also to entire families, groups and communities. It is important that you become fully aware of them before you can learn to beware of them and their negative consequences, both personally and relationally.

Prejudices are pre-cognitive; that is, they do not arise from perceptions, but are already in place before perceptions, shaping the latter to be in accord with the former. Prejudice also arises from lazy thinking—if thinking at all. Rather, it tends to be absorbed into our consciousness from our family of origin and/or group of choice. Our shared prejudices are rather like cognitive tattoos of common identity and belonging.

Prejudice includes a kind of unconscious blindness. My mother raised me to be “color-blind.” Yet when we moved down to the deep south in pre-civil rights in 1959, it appeared that the radical separation of blacks from whites represented a kind of blindness to the fact of our common humanity. The southern community was divided between “whites” and “coloreds.” It was even written on segregated water fountains and public bathrooms. I wondered whether others noticed its profoundly divisive significance.

A culture divided against itself cannot long stand. M. Scott Peckhad it right: “Unless we empty ourselves of preconceived cultural or intellectual images and expectations, we not only cannot understand the other, we cannot even listen. Indeed, we cannot even feel empathy.” Developing compassion for one another is an essential element for dispelling prejudice. Christina Baldwin put it this way: “Spiritual energy brings compassion into the real world. With compassion, we see benevolently our own human condition and the condition of our fellow beings. We drop prejudice.”

What must we do to overcome our prejudices? One way to dissipate your recognized prejudices is to think like a scientist. Scientists must remain open to new data, which might require theoretical change, from minimal modification to downright rejection of a previously established theory. Indeed, science is built on testable theories, which must remain open to additional research. The problem is, of course, we cannot live our lives on merely provisional data; we need to make our cognitive home as sturdy as our physical dwelling place.

Travelling, seeing the world helps to eradicate prejudice. Mark Twain said, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

Thoreau said that it is never too late to give up our prejudice. We just have to be open to new learning, for prejudice breeds on, and hides behind, ignorance. We need to work together in ways which will demonstrate that we are all human, all in this together. As Ralph Sockman said, “In overcoming prejudice, working together is even more effective than talking together.”

That has proven true for me, in the military, the workplace, and the playing fields of sports.