Prejudice is something that can taint any person
By Nick Jacobs
One of my first jobs was in teaching. As a young educator who had grown up in a rural area, the racial prejudice that I saw was shocking.
“My students were poor, and they often came to school without breakfast — hungry, and they knew, even in their youth, the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it was so because I saw it in their eyes. I often went home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.”
These words from President Lyndon Johnson were from a speech to a joint session of Congress on the evening that he introduced the Voting Rights Act. They came from his own memories, and were designed to convince the U.S. Congress to grant every eligible person in the United States the right to vote.
Johnson’s words also express the deeply held feelings about my early teaching days. More importantly, they are indicative of what we are seeing again today.
Years later, while working in a more affluent school district, I witnessed another version of prejudice – class prejudice – and that type of prejudice was just as wrong. Both experiences, however, involved some version of those same misdirected emotions.
For those of us who have explored our feelings, we sometimes discover that we also harbor thoughts that we would not otherwise admit to without this soul-searching process. In fact, without verbalizing the draconian “dark side” of our environmental conditioning, we would not ever even recognize our own irrational and preconceived judgments and opinions that we direct toward groups or individuals based on race, gender, religion, or socioeconomic status. Prejudice is something that can taint any person.
At its core, prejudice is an emotionally based opinion that does not come from facts or sufficient knowledge. These prejudices often manifest as hostility toward individuals, groups, races, or other characteristics. Be it racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or classism, prejudice influences interactions and decisions directed toward individuals perceived to be different from us.
Historically, those showing and embracing prejudice often do so to make themselves feel better about their challenges or shortcomings. These feelings can take the form of bias in hiring or other workplace interactions. It is also present in health care inequities, educational barriers, or social interactions.
Albert Einstein once said, “It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.”
Addressing and reducing prejudice requires a multifaceted approach that includes education that promotes positive intergroup interactions. As Harper Lee said in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Another favorite quote comes from poet Maya Angelou, “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”
By understanding the nature and manifestations of prejudice, we can take steps to address and reduce its impact. This can be carried out through education, empathy, long-term interventions, and systemic changes. Through those efforts, we can create a more inclusive and fair society.
We should respect our neighbor’s rights, understand there is only one race, the human race, and that we are all created equal. But most importantly, we must stop “filling our tanks with cheap gas” by putting down or hating other people for their differences. We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools, to use the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.
In closing, when you look in a mirror, make sure there’s not a hater staring back from it. Finally, how about this quote from Paul Reubens, the creator of Pee Wee Herman: “I try to be kind to everyone because you never know what battles they are fighting.”
Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.