In: Psychology
Before you know whether we can eliminate prejudice and discrimination in our society or not you must know what it is. Prejudice, a Latin word, is made of two root words, pre - mean before and judice implies judgment. It means when one judges anything before knowing it based on her or his old beliefs, experiences, and stereotypes. Prejudice and stereotypes (which is much similar to prejudice) lead to discrimination or discrimination is the product of prejudice and stereotypes.
Your culture, work method, values, food, clothes, and so on are not like me so you are this or that. This is prejudice.
We work, most of the time, on a superficial level of problem. Eradicating a problem from the root is the best elimination of that problem. The first and foremost thing we need to do is find all the root causes and sources of prejudice.
A healthy and innovative education system can certainly uproot prejudice and discrimination. After all, prejudices are our false (almost every time) beliefs which we have got from our parents, friends, and society. Once we educate one then, he or she would be better able to see the world from a better eye and understand people from more than one lens of perspective.
Fear of rejection is also a reason for prejudice. Most of the time we don’t initiate a talk or behave in a way that we actually want to behave. This leads to pre-assumptions and false beliefs about people. We must not make assumptions based on our previous experience and try to mix up with people of other races and society as much as possible. We should also create awareness in people about their inconsistent beliefs and discriminations that they impose on others who are not like them in one way or another.
One of the reasons for prejudice and discrimination is we most of the time confine ourselves to a particular place, city or country. When we come out of our dear place then we see around us different people are doing different things. We explore different cultures, people, and places. We get to know why people do what they do. It changes our perspective on how we see things and also breaks our old and false beliefs.