Prejudice is simply defined as a “prejudgment”, “an unjustifiable (and usually negative) attitude toward a group and it’s members. Prejudice generally involves stereotyped beliefs, negative feelings, and a predisposition to discriminatory action” (Exploring Psychology 545). I know all about prejudice, my family and I deal with it all the time. I grew up in a family that’s culturally diverse, by this I mean I have people of different race, gender, sexual orientation, and mental capabilities in my family. When we go out people assume they know us before meeting us. Ignorance is a word I have for them, because I know if they stare, they don’t understand. According to our textbook, “Exploring Psychology,” it states that prejudice arises from “inequality, social divisions, and emotional scapegoating“ (545). Prejudice is used throughout the world in different ways. Whether it’s dating, education, neighborhoods, or even work environments, point is it’s everywhere whether we ignore it or not.

Throughout our society we’ve divided genders into rules. Like women cook, clean, and shop, while men fix, work, and watch sports. “Gender inequality and discrimination persist too. Despite gender equality in intelligence scores, people tend to perceive their fathers as more intelligent than their mothers” (Exploring Psychology 546). Men are perceived as the dominant, while women remain the recessive, because they seem to be the weaker sex. In some countries women get paid less than men for the same jobs. When it comes to car insurance men are charged more because statistics say that more men get in accidents than women. Gender can make us or break us when it comes to the real world obstacles, it’s just up to us to use them.

Our world also have social inequalities, this is when people judge others by how much they make or from the environment they grew up in, resulting in discrimination and increasing prejudice. “Being a victim of discrimination can produce either self-blame or anger. Both reactions may create new grounds for prejudice through the classic blame-the-victimdynamic” (Exploring Psychology 548). This means that people in the ghetto can learn to be prejudice against others who are poor or even just hanging in that group to be gang members. Just assuming they know their type of people. I even remember a time in PE that we had a girl who was mentally retarded playing basketball and when she had the ball people would let her just run around and shoot, because they felt bad for her. So one day I took the ball and people labeled me as being rude, but I stood up to them and said, “We’re playing basketball, she’s a person not a dog. Why should we be treating her any different than you and I?” when I said that, she was happy, she told me I was her best friend, because she knew I understood. So maybe it’s not about the person, but the level of understanding a person that can segregate us.

In our society we’ve created our own ingroup and outgroup, meaning that we socially divide ourselves “through our social identities we associate ourselves with certain groups and contrast ourselves with others” (549). We “mentally draw a circle that defines “us” (the ingroup) excludes “them” (the outgroup). Such group identifications typically promote an ingroup bias-a favoring of one’s own group” (549). This is kind of like high school with their cliques of jocks, nerds, asians, and so on they separate by section of the school. After being there for one day you learn the segregation of tables, hallways, and classrooms. We learned the rules and thoughts of others, self teaching stereotypes and supporting the assumption people put on our shoulders.

“Following 9/11, some outraged people lashed out at innocent Arab-Americans, about whom negative stereotypes blossomed… That year people let their prejudice express anger. When things go wrong, finding someone to blame can provide a target, a scapegoat, for one’s anger.” (Exploring Psychology 549). I had a friend who was Muslim and her family owned a small Arabic market in Fremont, CA. one night some high school students threw rocks and other object at the store breaking their windows and some went as far as going inside the store to sabotage it. This just supports how ignorant Americans became after 9/11, blaming innocent people just for their ethnic background. People shouldn’t distribute hate on another merely for accident of birth into a culture, but by their character.

“’Fear and anger create aggression against citizens of different ethnicity or race creates racism and, in turn, new forms of terrorism…’”(Exploring Psychology 550). Throughout our country people have developed hate and only by false beliefs such as 9/11 and the war. “Evidence for this scapegoat theory of prejudice comes from high prejudice levels among economically frustrated people and from experiments in which a temporary frustration intensifies prejudice“ (Exploring Psychology 550). The people of our country have built this up from the ground up.

There’s a section in our text about prejudice I learned to understand the passage that says, “To boost our own sense of status, it helps to have others to denigrate” (Exploring Psychology 550). Which is true when u think about it. We have these stereotypes in high school where there’s a popular group, but there’s always that one girl that’s either labeled as ugly, nerdy, or outcast but is included in the group to make the others feel more confident for themselves. These are the people I’d prefer to stay away from. Prejudice is all around us, but to be included in the process of it, I’d prefer not to be.

Prejudice is a powerful thing and if used directly as a negative choice, it could cause a lot of harm. People use prejudice to lead to hate crimes and out casting people from social circles, but we all can’t let it get to us. An accident of birth into a culture, gender, or even mental state can’t make is the person we are, but its the character we develop from within. So basically the best thing to do is live life the way we want and let the positives drive us.