Article: http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/racial-prejudice.htm
The article I chose was called Racial Prejudice-Discrimination? I thought this was in interesting article because everyone knows about prejudice, it’s something we have learned about in school for most of our lives but I feel like people don’t really know about it or where it comes from. The author pointed out many aspects of prejudice such as, “fear, intolerance, separation, segregation, discrimination, and hatred” and the main source of prejudice and stereotypes as being ignorance and this is completely true. We are ill mannered when it comes to racial prejudice and a quote from the article I chose states, “Racial prejudice perverts this uniqueness of the races and takes the view that these differences separate individuals further into groups, with one group being inferior to the other”. This statement shows exactly how distorted our image of one another has become. I thought it was interesting to actually take a look at how the author of the article responded to the question of, do we all have it? I agree that it’s hardwired in our systems from the moment we begin to recognize differences among the people we are surrounded by. As the article also describes, we constantly judge people based on “superficial characteristics” which only increases stereotyping and prejudice. I thought this article did a nice job at identifying the origin of prejudice such as the fact that it dates all the way back to Bible times and the times of Hitler and touching on different areas of why it still exists. (Word Count: 253)
July 31, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I think that this article sounded interesting because often when we learn about stereotyping schools always start with America’s discrimination against African Americans. We never really go back to the roots, look how it started, how it progressed, and how we can prevent it from still happening. I think that if we all took a class and really got in depth into the roots of stereotyping then we could get to the roots on how to change it. I think one of the biggest things we need to accomplish is to find a way to divert stereotyping without making everyone feel uncomfortable.
(Word Count: 102)
July 31, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Fear of the unknown is a defiant factor in racism and stereotypes. Often time people use these as a defense mechanism instead of driving to the root of their feelings. Additionally, these types of feels are passed down from older to younger groups, where the younger groups just accept these feelings as the way of the world. Many of our ethnic characteristics cant be hidden, so this makes it much easier for those that practice racism or want to use stereotypes to target a particular group. This has been seen throughout US history with blacks, Japanese, Hispanics, and most recently Arabs. Great analysis of the article!
Word count = 106
July 31, 2008 at 11:08 pm
I can relate to your article and see how we need to understand differences and build ‘tolerance’ and accept others as they are. Now stereotypes have harmed our brains so much that we fail to overcome our fears of accepting others that are different in race, color, ethnicity, height, weight and etc. I still at times fear becoming friends with new people because I am scared I will be judge or someone else will judge me.
(Word Count 76)