Reflection #10

The word prejudice means to “pre-Judge”. To Judge someone prior to knowing anything about them. Prejudice is our awareness that other people in the world are not like us, do not look like us, or think like we do. So we form a group that looks like us or resemble who are. Are we born prejudice? The answer to that question is quite simple “No” we are not born prejudice human beings. If in fact we are not born prejudging others how did this come about? Well we born into families, cultures, groups etc… that make up the prejudice we have. Why do we prejudge someone or group? The reasons are many one reason could be that it answers all our unanswered questions. Another could be that it may make us feel that we are superior then another or inferior. Example of prejudging a group something that my people (Haitians) do at times is say that all Native Haitian know how to do math. That is also a stereotype to me and in fact I see prejudging and stereotype go “hand in hand” in this situation. I tend to prejudge people all the time. When I first saw you I judge you on your appearance I thought you were an African. I may be right in that situation but the fact of the matter is we sometimes judge at our first glance at an individual. I believe we all are prejudice to some degree. No one can say that they are not because before we know the person or even met the person we have assume the way that they are without giving them an opportunity to let them say who they are. Before I register for a course I always tend to check on ratemyprofessors.com to see what prior students had to say about the course and also the professor. When I check your ratings people said you gave a lot of work. When that may be true in theory they left out that you care about your student s success. So first day of class I walk in and in my head when listening to the entire task I had to do in six weeks I thought I was going to die. But come to figure out that if you stay on top of your things you should be fine. Getting back on track, we prejudge whether we want to or not sometime time. I believe it comes to be a problem when we let hurt others around us, when we exclude others because they do not look, talk, believe, and act like we do. The truth of the matter is we are born into different cultures that at many times tell us who to like, who to trust, who to associate or “hang with” for lack of a better words. We need to step out of that group at times and look from the outside in to truly get to know every human being we encounter. Even then we cannot base one encounter on a group of people we have not even said “Hello” to.