لایب سان

توضیحات کتاب :

P rejudice is essentially any negative attitude held by a member of one group of people toward another group. Typically, people are subjected to prejudice because of their race, ethnicity, reli- gion, gender, or sexual orientation. In the United States, people in these categories—with sexual orientation being the exception in many cases—are protected from discrimination in schools, the workplace, and elsewhere by the rights spelled out in laws and in the U.S. Constitution. While institutional prejudice can be protected against, personal prejudices are more subtle and harder to combat. For example, research has shown that persons responsible for hiring decisions have unconscious prejudices that influence them. One study showed that employers made assumptions that people who spoke with a Southern accent were less intelligent than those who did not. Because such prejudices are often unconscious, they are dif- ficult to change. Many studies have attempted to determine the origins of prejudi- cial attitudes. Some such attitudes are definitely learned. Children raised in a household where parents dislike a particular minority, for example, grow up hearing disparaging comments about that minor- ity. They may then find themselves believing what their parents believe. The same is true of the influence of peer groups: A young person may absorb the beliefs of an influential friend and begin expressing such beliefs as his or her own. New research, however, is showing that prejudice may also be an innate part of the human brain. Essentially, humans may cat- egorize other humans into groups without thinking about it. This response may have helped early humans survive by enabling them to determine quickly who was an enemy and who was a friend. Although this research sheds light on the origins of prejudice, it does not offer a justification for prejudicial behavior. People can clearly learn to overcome prejudice, whatever its origins.