Prejudice Vs Individual Prejudice

Marian Anderson once said, “Prejudice is like a hair across your cheek. You can't see it, you can't find it with your fingers, but you keep brushing at it because the feel of it is irritating.” The denotation of prejudice is “the preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” Just like hair, prejudice grows and grows inside one’s soul and mind. The mind is taught how to make judgment before having the facts on an idea or before knowing a person. Prejudice can come in many forms, some more common than others. For example, a few of the most common types of prejudice happens to be colorism, racism, and sexism. More often than not, the word “prejudice” leaves a foul taste in the mouth of the user, even though everyone has their own prejudices, whether they would like to admit that or not. Prejudice thoughts and actions can affect everyday life through interactions and attractions, causing lifelong scars that never seem to fade.
Everyday interactions in the workplace, school, and other places where social skills come into play can help develop one’s prejudices towards others without any warning.
Social stereotypes also aid in developing prejudices, especially. From there, prejudices are expanded and then walk hand in hand. For instance, individual prejudices can affect interpersonal prejudices. Individual prejudices includes one’s general biased thoughts toward other groups, and interpersonal prejudices includes one’s biased attitude toward another certain individual. For example, if a person has a general hatred or general like for a particular social group, when they interact with someone apart of that group daily, their attitude and behavior towards that person may change based solely on their individual
prejudices. Likewise, the prejudices mentioned above can affect who and what people find attractive in others, and from there, what they look for in a partner and spouse. Many know the renowned saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” but is that just said to cover and hide the prejudices humans have when finding a lifelong partner? For example, the Washington Post once wrote, “A number of researchers have independently found that, when people are asked to rate an individual’s attractiveness, their responses are quite consistent, even across race, sex, age, class and cultural background. Facial symmetry and unblemished skin are universally admired. Men get a bump for height, women are favored if they have hourglass figures, and racial minorities get points for light skin color, European facial characteristics and conventionally “white” hairstyles.” From this, anyone who does not fit the consistency, such as short men and racial minorities, are considered “not as attractive” as those who fit the mold. Although, everyone has their own physical preferences, social standards on beauty has made massive impacts on what society thinks “beautiful” is. Models and celebrities usually align with those beauty standards; therefore, causing everyday people to desire to look, act, and find partners that align with those standards as well.
Prejudice can quickly turn into discrimination when daily behavior and communication is different towards certain people due to membership in particular social groups and ethnicities. Prejudices are known to lead to unfair treatment in the workplace and when it comes to justice in the law. It is not unlikely for such prejudices to cause depression and other psychological illnesses. To put into perspective, the Nazis’ prejudices towards Jews and other groups, who were wrongly killed during the Holocaust, caused many of those who survived to suffer from lifelong mental illnesses, specifically depression. In conclusion, prejudice can affect daily interactions, attraction, and can cause horrid lifelong ailments.