Prejudice

Contrary to popular belief, the word 'prejudice' has little to do with race. Nor is it entirely negative by definition. According to Dictionary.com, prejudice is defined as, "an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason." Alternately, it is also described as "any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable." As one can extract from the definition, prejudice can also be a positive preconceived notion. Unfortunately, most people only act on their negative prejudices, and leave their positive ones to be dismissed as pleasant cerebrations. Additionally, most people do not recognize their positive prejudices as such. To many, those thoughts are simply considered "thoughts." When I witness someone lashing out as an effect of their negative prejudices, I often have cause to laugh at their ignorance.

As an example of this humorous induction, please indulge me as I recount:

This morning, while I was supervising my children playing outside, Alex and Lucas were standing approximately 20 yards from each other, right at the convergence of the sidewalk and street. They know not to actually stray out into the street, although sometimes it's difficult to keep them from doing so. As they were standing there, a car began its descent down the hill across from our house. As it turned the corner directly in front of us, it cautiously slowed down until it had passed the point where there was danger of the boys running out into the street. I applaud the driver for his or her courteousy. As this was happening, I was sitting in a chair by the steps to our front door. I stayed seated while the car passed. A short distance behind the first car, came a second. They also slowed down until they passed the boys, but at the last minute, before they drove away, one of the occupants abhorrently shouted, "Get up!"

Why would this be humorous, you ask? Well, from their vantage, there's little possibility that they could have seen tiny Audrey teetering on the bottom step of our concrete walkway. I had my arm stretched out holding her back so she wouldn't tumble down and crack her head on the cement. I chose to trust that the boys would not run in the street, and that the cars would slow down more than I trusted that Audrey would not fall. If I had decided to get up and walk, or even run, over to where the boys were, there wouldn't have been time for me to put Audrey out of harm's way, race over to one boy, then the other, to pull them back from the street before both cars had the opportunity to pass. As I was sitting there holding Audrey up, I warned the boys that there were cars coming and to stay out of the street. All of these were examples of the "knowledge, thought or reason" that the person who made the remark was not privy to before they preconceived their judgment of me being a horrible mother who would stay seated while she carelessly let her children play in the street in the peril of an oncoming car.

Another example of a prejudice reaction would be that of the perfectly and appropriately vigilant female driver in the Target parking lot. I was walking to the car last summer with the boys in the cart, Audrey in my belly and Sarah following along behind me. As we crossed into the aisle where our car was parked, an SUV started making it's way down the aisle behind the oblivious little Sarah. I turned my head to warn her to get out of the street, and an onlooker helped encourage her over to the side by the parked cars so that the SUV could get through. The driver of the SUV kindly stopped and waited until Sarah was out of the street, then continued cautiously down to find a parking space. As she passed, a teenaged boy who had witnessed the incident immaturely shouted, "Learn how to drive!" He then turned and snickered with his teenaged female companion. The driver of the car must have assumed that I had shouted the inappropriate comment because as she walked past me toward the store while I was loading my family into the car she stared me down and muttered, "Some people need to learn how to control their kids!" I wasn't even sure who she was at this point, so I said, "Excuse me?" She retorted, "You tell me I need to learn how to drive. Well you need to learn how to control your kids!" I chuckled as I said, "I'm not even the one that said that." She looked away and kept walking.

This was funny to me because before she heard the chiding from the teenager, assumed it was me and retaliated by making her own equally inappropriate and vindictive remark, I was thinking to myself that I appreciated her carefulness while she was making certain not to hit any unsuspecting pedestrians (like Sarah) while she was in the parking lot. Many people are not that considerate.

Just as there are inappropriate and negative prejudices, there are also positive ones. I am guilty of that as recently as a few weeks ago. I logged onto my brother's myspace account and saw a picture of him with a girl at a ballgame. I commented to him and asked if she was the girlfriend he'd told me about. He informed me that she indeed was, and I commented back that I was excited for him. When he expressed confusion by my delight and inquired about the cause, I told him that she "looks like a nice girl." Being that I have never actually met her, there's no possible way that I could truly know whether she is nice or not. I preconceived a judgement based solely on the way she looked and possibly influenced by what I had heard from my brother. However, I wouldn't consider my prejudice in this instance a negative one.

Prejudice can be a good, positive thing, but more commonly it is negative, unproductive and useless. Going back to a previous post, we really should all watch what we say and do because we can never know what truly motivates other people.