“Prejudice is one of life’s little shortcuts”

I heard an interesting comment this morning, “prejudice is one of life’s little shortcuts.” At first this sounded somewhere between corny and offensive to me. I thought, “prejudice is serious, not something to make light of!”

Prejudice has negative connotations. We think of it as “uninformed, criticism.” Criticism is “judging negatively.” But being critical has two connotations: 1) the negative connotation of judging negatively; 2) the positive connotation of critical thinking, intellectual analysis. Using the latter definition provides an alternate take on uninformed criticism, or prejudice.

Let’s start with the basic research methodology of surveying. Because we can’t possibly speak to everyone individual in the world to fully understand people’s experiences, roles and interactions, we put together surveys to draw valid conclusions based on representative samples. Similarly, prejudices are our minds’ ways of understanding the vast and diverse groups that comprise our world. To follow this line of reasoning, prejudice is a kind of a subconscious research methodology for making sense of our world.

Everyone–regardless of how hard they try not to or how much they deny it–has prejudices (uses this research shortcut). It’s easy to overturn the thinking of a prejudice and claim tolerance, but it’s really very difficult to overcome the feeling of a prejudice: prejudices are deep-seeded, gut-level, shoot-from-the-hip analyses.

One flawed assumption is to think that you can prevent the judgments and prejudices of others by never fully joining, participating, committing to being part of a group. The line of reasoning goes like this: if you never commit, never really join, never 100% fully associate yourself with a group, an idea, a cause, you can’t be accused of being a part of it and thus, cannot be judged. However, this only results in being non-committal—it’s not a way to reduce prejudice or criticism.

The reality is that you can never really prevent the judgments of others. As much as you contort yourself or feign disinterest to avoid being judged, others will still judge you on other factors that you can’t know–let alone, control. If you never commit, never walk the walk, never go for it, you will live in a superficial world of liking everything, but loving nothing. So, you may as well put a stake in the ground and commit because at least then, you’ll be judged on something that you believe in and can defend.

The flip-side is also true: only walking the walk–consciously trying to overcome incorrect conclusions drawn from our shortcut research methodology, a.k.a. prejudice–will unseat our subconsious criticisms and breed tolerance.

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