Prejudice is a fascinating thing. We’ve all got it no matter what we think. For instance how many people reacted to my idea yesterday of using the talents of young drug dealers and educating them for big business in a negative way? [Thank you Ritish for your positive response] But how many of us deep in our hearts react negatively about certain people groups without really thinking. If we realise then as educated people we do often check ourselves and say sorry but often we don’t quite notice.
I’ve been reading No Place To Call Home by Katharine Quamby about gypsies and travelers in the UK especially those evicted from Dale Farm in the early 2000s. It amazed me how many things I read that I went “oh goodness that’s what I thought” only to discover that this was a minority not the majority, encouraged by media and TV programs like “Traffic Cops”.
Interesting fact – Gypsies and Travelers are not seen as an ethnic minority group in their own right! I wonder if this is because they are mainly Catholic?? That old throw back to anti-Catholicism. Another age old embedded prejudice.
We all judge people, subconsciously by their appearance, what they say, how they say it, even where they live and what car they drive.
I’ve just started watching a series of the fictionalised life of Griselda Bianco, a ruthless drug dealer. But it is interesting how she gets missed when she starts in the 1970s because both other dealers and the Police cannot believe it is a woman running the operation. In this account it is a woman detective in the Miami police who first notices but the other detectives won’t take any notice of what she is saying because she is a woman. Again that prejudice of how it could not be a woman who would deal in ruthless drug related activities and how a woman could not have worked it out!
I could list many stories where the author uses that clever twist of it being a woman not a man who committed that crime, playing into our stereotypes, into our prejudices.
I am trying really hard to ponder how often I look at someone and judge them before knowing them, or judge a people group without knowing all the facts.
Take the idea of the kids hanging out in the park versus the old people hanging out in the park. Immediately we’ve got different narratives running through our heads for the reasons they are there – one more noble than the other!
Jesus says
For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you
Matthew 7:2
So let us be careful with anyone, even if we think we know the truth, let us be careful we are not stepping into our own well-worn, subconscious prejudices.
Aspirational Adventures 