EMT
Platinum Member
- Jan 13, 2010
- 14,483
- 15,308
Basically, I think you're talking about prejudice. I mean judging a book by it's cover. Prejudice is bad where those choices are made out of deliberate malice to show dislike, to stem personal fear, to demonstrate superiority, to exclude others and to denigrate or deny their presence and rights. How to deal with this will depend on the nature of the prejudice, extent you have been prejudiced and in what environment. Important thing to know is that its not your problem. In deed, you many not need to change yourself, because you haven't done anything wrong. It is the other person who needs to change.
Dealing with prejudice is often a traumatic process for those on the receiving end, especially if you are not supported. Dealing with prejudice is never easy. And, I am afraid to say that prejudices will always be there. As an individual, you cannot change everyone's attitude because prejudice emerge in part as a result of human normal thinking. In order to make sense of the world around us, it is important to sort information into mental categories. However, the problem is that we tend to minimize the differences between people within groups and exaggerate the differences between groups.
It is really difficult do deal with this problem because in the modern society, social prejudice is accepted by society and few realize its destructive force. It kills motivation. It forces students to drop out of school with a failure label that prevents them from discovering their natural talent. People that are poorer are more likely to exhibit prejudice. We now need to do a lot more with human capital, human ingenuity in order to be able to maintain, never mind raise our standards of living. This is important, because prejudice is a huge waste of human potential. A prejudicial society is likely to deny its labour, its workforce, the potential to develop, access to education, access to jobs etc.
Ways to reduce prejudice training people to become more empathetic to members of other groups. By imaging themselves in the same situation, people are able to think about how they would react and gain a greater understanding of other people's actions. For example, at the moment, I don't new employees or even the existing ones are trained about these sort of things. That's why you find a lot of people in the offices making assumptions about others, having attitudes, making pre-judgement about others, stigmising others, etc. Other ways could include, passing laws and regulations that require fair and equal treatment for all groups of people, gaining public support and awareness for anti-prejudice social norms, making people aware of the inconsistencies in their own beliefs and ncreased contact with members of other social groups.
