AM I PREJUDICED?

I was teaching Instrumental English to my student last Thursday when we started to discuss questions of the text about prejudice. Of course, everybody has own opinion about this polemical theme, but no one claims to himself or herself this kind of title. If you ask for anyone about this, it's certain you are going to listen that is impossible to feel something  so awful nowadays, that this kind of thing shouldn’t exist in our modern society, that Mankind shouldn’t express these feelings anymore, because everybody is equal and so on. But, in fact, is it true? Is it possible we don’t have any prejudice inside us?

Well, I don’t know the right answer, but I’ll quote bellow the most interesting part of the text that emerged our discussion.

And I want to provoke you for discussing with us (me, actually) in these times of inequality and so many differences, in these times when no one is respected by your differences or simply by your way of think.

So, my question is: AM I PREJUDICED?

The original text:

“We might describe prejudice as a ‘prejudgment’. We automatically learn and apply prejudice and the use of stereotypes to everything and everyone in our environment as a way to neatly process information. Prejudice is an unavoidable part of the human condition.

To be human means to learn right from wrong, true from false, good from bad, tasteful from distasteful, safe from dangerous, all in accordance with the values from our own culture. We need our value system, our ability to prejudge, in order to live in our culture in a rational way. An individual who did not exercise his or her prejudice by being unable to discriminate between right and wrong, good and bad, etc. might be regarded as abnormal.

Our prejudice or prejudgment is neither positive nor negative; it is simply an unavoidable fact of our existence.

What becomes positive or negative is what we do with our prejudgments or stereotypes as we interact with others”.

(fonte: http://integration-net.ca/english/ini/wci-idca/tbo/ToolBox_Handout_6.pdf. Access Aug., 2010.)

Hughs for all