re: #95 jill e

I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I’ve written there is a thread of this: a man’s seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself. —ROD SERLING, Los Angeles Times, 1967

The problem is, “prejudice” — as in, unconsciously pre-judging someone based on their identity or appearance — is a fundamental component of how huimans function in society. We see a guy in a blue uniform with a badge and a gun and a stern expression — we pre-judge that he is a cop, and that he exists to enforce the law. We jump to conclusions, and treat him a certain way, based on our “prejudice” about his appearance. We see a woman in a glittery mini-skirt smoking a cigarette and walking up to cars in a seedy neighborhood — our prejudice tells us she is a prostitute. And we interact with her accordingly.

This same principle applies to nearly every human interaction we have, even though we don’t like to acknowledge it.

The reason this behavior has become almost genetically encoded in humans is that it works — 95% of the time, we’re right. People usually are who they seem to be. If pre-judging people was a non-useful method of social behavior, it would have died out long ago.

We don’t want to get rid of prejudice, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to. Functioning in a modern society would be extremely difficult without it.

The goal is not to get rid of prejudice entirely as a concept — which would be impossible anyway — but to discourage inaccurate and wrongheaded prejudices.