Prejudice

This piece presents us with the idea that children are instilled with prejudices at birth. They are taught these things by their family and friends and the environment in which they live effects these prejudices. Virtually everything around us affects our prejudices, for good or ill. I agree with the main point of this article, that specific prejudices are taught, and not inherent in us at birth. Young children have no qualms about playing with children of different ethnicity, and yet often those same children grow up to be racist. We are a veritable blank slate as children, and we are dependent upon our parents and our environment to help us fill this slate, hopefully with knowledge, though quite often this slate is filled with ignorance. On the one hand, I do believe specific prejudices are taught to us at birth, but on the other hand, I do believe that the capability to maintain a prejudice is something that every human being has inside of them from birth. Simply stated, I believe that the need to be superior to others is a trait inherent in every human-being, albeit in differing degrees depending on the person. If we were to teach our children in a way that did not lead them to develop prejudices, we would likely live in a more peaceful climate than we do now. That being said, many of the problems that exist today would still exist, simply because it is human nature to want to feel superior to others.