Prejudice

Straight AheadDo you really believe that you are without prejudice? If you truly believe that, you are sadly mistaken. Everyone has prejudice. What's more, it's probably inevitable; and if we didn't have some prejudices, we wouldn't be able to function very well in our daily lives. Are you shocked that I would make such a statement? Are you perhaps even wondering how a Christian minister could say such things? Well, I've been saying such things for many years. If you think about it with me for a minute, you may come away with some surprising conclusions! What is prejudice? It is a prejudgment, or a preconceived notion about something or somebody, perhaps some group of people or ideas. A prejudice can be either good or bad, either for or against its object. Some people are prejudiced against certain racial, national, or ethnic groups. Most of us would agree that such prejudices are unwarranted, and worse. But people have prejudices against all kinds of things. You may have a prejudice against certain vocations or occupations. Some people are prejudiced against the rich. Some people are prejudiced against the poor. People have prejudices against the blind, the deaf, the Southerners, the Northerners, the evangelical Christians, the Catholics, the Jews; but people also can have a favorable bias toward their family, their friends, their lovers, their spouses, their school, their sports teams, their make of car--and on and on it goes. Many of these prejudices, whether for or against their object, may be relatively harmless; but many are quite unreasonable and can turn dangerous. You may not even be aware of your prejudices. They may be very subtle, even sub-conscious, responses to the world around you; but they are still influencing the decisions you make. A person may have a prejudice against a certain group. Let's say you are prejudiced against blind people. I suppose I would be unhappy about that. But you may have only met three or four blind people in your life. Perhaps the blind people you met were rude, obnoxious, stumgling, incompetent, or otherwise unpleasant. If all the blind people you met were like that, and you only met a few blind people, wouldn't it be reasonable for you to assume that most blind people acted like the ones you had met? At the very least, if you had to make a decision about something to do with a blind person, you would be likely to rely on your past experiences--limited though they might be--in making that decision. Would that be fair? Perhaps not. But would it be reasonable. It quite possibly would be. If I were ever on a committee judging candidates for a position and was confronted by a blind candidate, I would very likely be harder on the blind person than the sighted people on the committee. Of course, many prejudices are not based so much on any kind of personal experience, but on fear or mistrust of something or someone who is different. While this kind of prejudice is certainly less reasonable, it can be exploited by opportunists and made to appear reasonable to certain types of people within a community. These are the kinds of prejudices that may not have initially been malicious, but were used by politicians or others to achieve power and dominance over a particular group in society. Segregationists in the South used this tactic to whip up a frenzy against blacks for 80 years. The tactic is still used today by opportunistic politicians and others to encourage prejudice and fear by new sets of victims. People think nothing of prejudices against politicians, doctors, businessmen, lawyers, car dealers, or whatever occupation, vocation, or class of people doesn't appeal to them; but those kinds of prejudices are taken in stride and assumed by many to be quite understandable and even normal. I always say that if you took a survey of all the occupations and vocations in the world, you'd find about the same percentage of good and bad, honest and dishonest, in all of them--including ministers. Some religions even teach that God has a bias in favor of the poor; and biblical texts are often dragged out of context in support of this notion which I admit to finding rather strange. The fact of the matter is that we all have preconceived notions or prejudgments about something or other--and we use those prejudgments every day to make decisions because we can't possibly have enough information about everything we need to know in order to make all the decisions, large and small, that face us during our lives. We will either respond favorably or unfavorably in certain situations toward certain individuals or groups; but to argue that our responses and actions are always based on rational and logical grounds is folly. We all have our own set of criteria which will determine those groups or individuals toward whom we will respond favorably and those to whom we will respond negatively; and your criteria may be very different from mine; but in any case, we all have our own set of positive and negative prejudices. The key is that we must not allow these prejudices to drive us to violent or hateful behavior. We must be willing to give up those prejudices which prove truly destructive or totally unfair and wrong. We must not allow our displeasure over the actions of one person to color our attitude toward an entire group; and we must allow for the possibility that even that one person can be forgiven and may change their conduct. We must also realize that our perceptions of certain actions may have been incorrect and be prepared to change our opinions when we see our own mistake in judgment. We can deplore the actions of a person without condemning that person. This is the way of Christianity. Even Christianity, however, does not demand that we disavow all prejudgments or preconceived notions. It simply demands that we be open to the truth, no matter where the truth may lead us; and that we allow love to conquer our fears and prejudices. Nobody is completely without prejudice, nor indeed can be!