“Everyone is prejudiced, whether they know it or not.”

I’ve heard this statement several times lately, from sources I respect and others I don’t.  After careful consideration and personal evaluation, I still disagree.  Because I respect some of the people who buy into this absolute notion, I wonder if the matter might not come down to semantics, or, how the word ‘prejudice’ is being defined.

Prejudice, in my understanding, is a value judgment made based on the demographics of a person or group without regard to individual character or evidence. That evidence, given a chance, could support or refute the stereotype associated with the demographic group in question.  I’ll grant that every culture has a collection of stereotypes for the other cultures they associate with.  Unfortunately, there tends to be evidence to support stereotypes, but this is no excuse for applying them without considering the individual.  Doing so is both lazy and divisive.

There remains the fine line between ‘prejudice‘ and ‘bias‘, both being an advance opinion of an unknown (such as a person, community, food, etc).  Bias exists, because from the time we’re first exploring our world, we’re looking at what we don’t know through the lens of what we do know.

I don’t like peas, they’re green & mushy, so is asparagus.  My mom insisted on broadening my lens at every opportunity (thanks!), so I gave asparagus a fair try, and I like LOVE it.  Brussels sprouts could go either way.

Prejudice is stronger than bias, and is generally not founded in first hand experience.

As one continues sliding up the scale of intensity and distance from first hand experience, they approach the extreme called bigotry.  When I hear the phrase “everybody’s prejudiced”, usually a polite variation on “everyone’s a bigot and I must inform them”, I have this intense passive-aggressive desire to respond with “Thank you, how bigoted of you to say so.”  That would break my polite rule, so I don’t.  I also eat Brussels Sprouts for the sake of the polite rule, though I have assessed them & determined that I don’t like them.  At least I gave them a fair try.  Incidentally, the polite rule has also expanded my palate to a tolerance for peas.

This takes me back to my perspectives on people, and my genuine longstanding habit of giving everyone a fair chance to show/tell me who they are, stereotypes aside.  I start, as we all do, with identifying familiar aspects – the way they carry themselves or speak makes certain suggestions based on the qualities of other people who have the same manner or expressions.  As we get to know one another, given the chance, I then decide (as with b-sprouts) whether I enjoy them in large doses or small, can choke them down when necessary, or need to bury them in cheese and salt.  Some, like chicken livers, don’t get a second chance.  Others, like chocolate & potato chips, I (almost) can’t get enough of.

I’m willing to concede that we all make determinations about people, and we all do so with the information that we have and the level of exploration we are willing to apply.  I am not prepared to say we all are prejudiced, because the strength of the word implies that the decision is made and negative action is taken without consideration for individual varieties.  Actually, 3 of the 6 definitions for prejudice on dictionary.com declare it to be negative, 2 neutral, and 1 circular.

During my soul searching over this topic, I took opportunities to discuss the question (very carefully) with a few people from the ‘other side’ of the demographic ‘tracks’.  This leads to the next topic, Scapegoat!.