Prejudice and Related Concepts

Prejudice is an unsubstantiated pre-judgment that are negative for individuals or a group of people, usually on the grounds of ethnicity, race or religion. Bigotry is discriminating an individual or members of a particular group based on negative beliefs and perception against them or negative stereotype groups. Discrimination is a product of prejudice since it involves the exclusion of individuals or a group of people in the society due to prejudice. The history of prejudice dates back in Canada in the 17th and the 18th century between the Europeans colonizers and the aboriginal people. European saw the aboriginal as soulless barbarians. Prejudice deteriorated when large-scale settlement began where the aboriginals were viewed as impediments rather than economic development aid. For instance, black Canadians and Asians were treated as inferiors, and encountered prejudice in a significant way and slavery existed in the British North America and New France (Koppelman, 2014).

A good example of prejudice is ethnic minority or racial or minority discrimination. In the pre-modern China, racism and ethnicity heightened the tension in the country. In the 8th century, Honshu people likened the Wusun people to macaque monkeys and described them as barbarians with green eyes and dark red eyes. The conflict rose between races ethnicity and the results were genocide. A Chinese leader in the 350 A.D led the Han Chinese people to massacre the non-Chinese people. Many Arabs and Persian merchants were also slaughtered in the 760 A.D by Chinese. Today, ethnicity issues in China are still common from the historical influences. This has driven several movements like the Red Turban Rebellion that targets Yuan Dynasty and the Xinhua Revolution that over threw the Manchus. In a recent modern unrest, dynamic ethnicity has been witnessed, like on July 2010 in Urumqi riots (Anti-Defamation League, 1999).

Another example is gender prejudice. This is based on sexism, believing that one gender group is superior. For instance, the attitude that girls don’t understand science and math as boys do is a stereotype that has been long held by basic female intelligence. If that school chose to make the science and math available for boys only, they are acting on discrimination by limiting females the right to equal opportunities in education.

The impacts of gender discrimination are very severe. According to a survey, female believe the main existence of gender prejudice is in workplaces. Women do same tasks as men, but men receive a higher pay that women or women are forced to perform more tasks than men. The impacts of gender discrimination are lost productivity since they lack motivation. However, federal laws prohibit these workplace harassments or sexual demands to defend the “weaker” gender. Family responsibilities are another consequence (Walden University, 2013d). When women and young girls are left to take up all family responsibilities, which is gender discrimination. Female end up developing a strong resentment and sometime break up the family or kill the male character (Walden University, 2013a)..

In my opinion, it is very possible for us to co-exist in world that is discrimination free. This will happen if all the stakeholders collaborate to form a society of inclusion. If we provide information to education and training to build knowledge as well as grow the potential skills among all genders, a change in attitude will automatically lead to independence, prosperity integration and determination

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