Reflection 10

Dr. Cole is so on point when he say's that we need to stop focusing on the victims of prejudice. Never before have I looked at prejudice in this manner. Honestly this is really messing with my head; it kind of makes the Southern Poverty Law Center seem unimportant and worthless. Instead we should be using our resources trying to rehabilitate the people who demonstrate prejudices because in all actuality, they are the ones with a problem. It would be pointless to say "okay people, you know 'this group' hates you so we're going to need you to change.'" Number one, its been tried before and it failed miserably. Before the Civil Rights Movement, blacks did everything the whites wanted them to. The drank from crappy water fountains, they jumped off sidewalks when they saw whites coming, they basically did everything but give them blood and their first born (which can be argued). To understand how prejudices work we first must understand the different processes; unintentional and intentional prejudices. Unintentional prejudice stems from early learning. Its able to manifest itself because its mostly information we received in passive learning that we didn't care to examine. Everyone has their unintentional prejudices that they're most likely unaware of and when they're brought to light, can be readily denied because they make us uncomfortable. A common example is when a white person is accused of being racist or prejudice and they scream "no I'm not! I have black friends!" Now most of us know that having 'friends' of a different group does not assure multicultural awareness, but for the person in denial, it does. Intentional prejudices, however, comes from later learning and is an active learning process. While its uncommon, people with this type of prejudice have a strong motivation for their beliefs and mainly use them when they feel threatened. This form of prejudice is more so like a personality disorder and because it's deeply rooted in them, can be hard to change. Amazingly they do respond to those they see to be in authority. This leads me to wonder about the racism and prejudices the existed openly in our country a few decades ago. We all know that children aren't born with hatred, that its a learned trait. So basically someone's parents began being prejudice towards people because they were scared of them, intentional prejudice. But their children saw their prejudices was and internalized them as unintentional prejudices. But I am confused as to how the cycle continued. Is this unchecked ethnocentrism or something else?