Hatred and Prejudice
Prejudice is inescapable in today’s society. It is disturbing to think that humans have not been able to transcend such a base concept and advance as a society. The article Why We Hate addresses some of these issues. The article describes how people tend to be act afraid or even hateful toward anything or anyone different from themselves and calls these actions “xenophobia.”
It is impossible to escape from these types of prejudices in everyday life because here in “the melting pot” there is such a diversity of culture and ethnicity. People like to judge everyone around them, and since most people tend to be very xenophobic, they will probably perceive some type of prejudice about many of the people around them.
One of the main points in this article was the prejudice toward Middle Eastern and Muslim people after 9/11. Most, if not all of these people living in America had to deal with tremendous amounts of prejudice and hatred. This is just like the stupid mistake that was made back in WWII with the Japanese interment. I find it very difficult to understand how people believe that just because someone from another country did something horrible to us then that must mean that everyone who looks like them must also be bad. This seems like kindergarten logic to me. Just because some radical extremist muslim faction hates America, then all muslims are evil? I don’t understand.
Society creates these prejudices through many different stereotypes. We are often so exposed to these stereotypes that they become ingrained into our minds and they form the prejudices that we express. Why can’t humans learn to move beyond this type of thinking? People are individuals and stereotypes are often very inaccurate. Why then do we continue to hate? There are children in the playgrounds in elementary schools who have to go through so much emotional stress everyday simply because of the color of their skin. Imagine what type of mental...