WHY ARE PEOPLE PREJUDICE???

Question answered by honorarykid in Scientology

QQANGEL asked this question on 10/1/2000:

I AM ONLY 15 YEARS OLD, BUT I WANT TO UNDERSTAND WHY ARE PEOPLE PREJUDICE, AREN'T EVERYONE SOULD BE EQUAL???? PLEASE GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLE,AND YOUR OPINION TOWARD THIS SUBJECT, I NEED TO WRITE A PAPER ON THIS TOPIC, THANKS...

honorarykid gave this response on 10/1/2000:

I'm loathe to do your homework for you. Your question is an interesting one, and because it ties in to the subject matter at hand, Scientology, I'll give you my opinion.

Please, write your own paper, okay? Don't just copy down my opinion and pretend it's yours. As an adult (which you will be VERY shortly) you will need to be able to judge and synthesize and form your own opinions. There's no time like the present to begin practicing to think for yourself.

Also, before I answer, let me nitpick a bit. Turn off your CAPSLOCK key. Type in combined upper and lower cases, with proper capitalization of your sentences. That makes your paper easier to read. Second, make an effort to spell correctly, especially in the words you're exploring. Prejudice is a noun, and prejudiced is an adjective. Don't mix up the two forms, or you'll be proving to your teacher that you aren't really grasping the topic.

I don't believe we are born with prejudices (noun). I think we become prejudiced (adjective) because we are taught to be.

Prejudices are not a bad thing, a priori[1]. Prejudices help us learn and thereby help us avoid the repetition of mistakes. The word prejudice itself comes from the word "prejudge." To prejudge something implies that you see a situation and you already know something about it, because of it's similarities to your past experiences and learning. Prejudices can help you know (or think you know) how to respond to the new situation, based on those similarities. And, for the most part, that's a good thing.

In our hugely complex, highly specialized civilization, we cannot each go out and verify every single scrap of information and premise with which we're faced. We just don't have the time. But luckily, the human mind has a very slick and handy ability to recognize patterns, to equate new situations with past experiences. In this way, we learn that steam rising is hot, so don't touch the stove underneath the kettle, and all manner of similar, helpful and useful things.

Where our pattern recognition isn't perhaps as helpful, or where it even turns distructive, is when the pattern and the thing being associated with it aren't actually connected. Prejudice becomes harmful, when our beliefs and recognitions are not in line with reality, or when our learning is based upon false information.

For example, as a Caucasion person, if I learn that another person's skin color causes them to be bad and violent, that's simply a lie.

If I believe that, when I see people who don't look like me, I live in fear, and I might seek to oppress such people. My actions based on my own ignorant prejudices have the potential to harm every person of color who does not fit the false pattern I have been taught. This is prejudice at it's most distructive.

When black people were owned and kept as slaves in the U.S., all manner of lies were told to the whites in order to promote false stereotypes and prejudices. Blacks were too stupid to read, it was alleged. They were akin to dumb animals and cattle. They had no souls. And this was all taught, in spite of the fact most people understood that Black people could learn to read just fine.

They also knew it was (conveniently, for slave owners) a crime to teach a slave how to read.

Ironically, near the end of the American Civil War, in 1865, the Commanding General of the Southern armies, Robert E. Lee, requested that slaves be organized into combat units in order to offset manpower shortages in the army. The Southern Legislature agreed! This was a very shocking development for many whites who had, up until that time, been comfortable with their false sense of superiority.

One Southern politician rhetorically asked something to the effect "if Negros make good soldiers, then aren't we just proving that the cause we've been fighting for and shed so much blood for, has been a lie?" That's a good question, don't you think?

We learn our prejudices from our experiences, and from our parents, churches, schools and even our governments. During WWII, the U.S. government promoted horribly false and base stereotyping of Japanese people. This was seen as justifiable, because we were at war, and the military effort to defeat Japan was aided by irrational fervency and hatred of the "Japs." Many Germans were inculcated by their fascist government with an irrational view of the Jews which led to the slaughter of millions.

Sometimes we learn predujices from experiences which might be accurate and true within an isolated locale, but which we then scale up into generalizations. But those generalizations are false, and promote policy which then creates a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But to scale that fear up to indict all black people is ridiculous.

Finally, because this forum is about Scientology, I will also talk about a few of the inculcated and irrational prejudices of Scientolgists.

To L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, enemies abounded. Psychiatrists, space aliens, English bankers, secret conspiracist, so-called "suppressive persons", and even Scientologists themselves, all were potential threats to his paranoid way of thinking.

So, because Hubbard perceived so many as enemies, Scientology evolved to include his bizarre world view, which is formally inculcated into the minds of his followers. So now Scientologists are irrationally prejudiced against many, many groups of people, and even more amazing, they even distrust each other. The have a system of tattling on each other, and on themselves, call "knowledge reports" which are written up and turned in to Church superiors. And every so often, the members are forced to take a very coercive grilling session, called a "security check" or "sec-check." This insures their continued loyalty, and proves that since the last time, they have not become a threat to the Church.

When this sort of reality exists, the members cannot really rely on each other with trust and friendship. They continually have to prove their loyalty. One of the ways they prove their loyalty is to "strike a blow" against the churches enemies, which ends up making people angry, and which can easily generate real enemies.

Scientologists are taught to be this way, and they have accepted that teaching. They have been taught to be prejudiced, irrationally.

But it's important not to fall into the same trap as a political opponent of such a system. I realize that we can all learn irrational prejudices so very easily, simply by accepting things on faith, by not demanding that claims be supported by evidence, by extrapolating from inadequate date, from repetition, from coercion, from emotional grasping, and especially from accepting without question, the things our parents teach us.

[1] - a priori is a latin phrase, which, in this sentence means "assumed to be true, prior to any examining or testing"

honorarykid gave this follow-up answer on 10/1/2000:

I apologize for an editing error, above. My answer was over the size limit, so I trimmed a few sections, leaving this sentence alone, without it's context:

"But to scale that fear up to indict all black people is ridiculous"

I was trying to explain the fallicy of scaling up of what, in a limited locale, might be an appropriate generization.

If one were a white person, who found himself surrounded by hostile "Bloods" and "Crips" gang members, it would be rational and reasonable to fear these angry young black men. But to scale that fear up and then indict all black people as violent, is ridiculous."

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