Today diversity, tolerance and respect for what is different are promoted, so prejudices are frowned upon. In this way, few people recognize that they have racist, or sexist, or other prejudices. But the fact that we do not recognize it does not mean that we live free of them and it is demonstrated by the degree of discrimination suffered by some groups that prejudices are part of our lives.
Avoid prejudice
- By an almost unconscious mechanism we tend to make categories of both situations and people in order to order the world and understand it better. However, the speed with which we type a person into a group without knowing them and the ease with which we determine the characteristics of that group without having enough information can lead us to place false labels.
- This would not cease to be a purely personal matter if those prejudices did not result in harm to the other person, since discrimination derives from prejudice. And it’s not always easy to spot this unfair behavior. Few people admit to being racist because no one believes in the superiority of one race over another anymore, and yet racist attitudes persist in our society.
- In the same way, fewer and fewer people dare to openly criticize a person for their sexual orientation, and yet homophobic comments and discrimination against homosexuals are observed every day. That it is not openly recognized does not mean that we live in a society open to tolerance, because the truth is that we continue to prejudge others.
Subtle prejudices
- While it is true that there are more obvious prejudices, such as all those derived from racism, there are also other less obvious judgmental behaviors. Because every day we catalog people without knowing them according to our own criteria, be it because of the way they dress, because of the work they do, because of the place where they live, because of the car they drive or even because of their physical features.
- But there is a very dangerous type of prejudice, especially for women, which is often covered up by not being recognized in a progressive and tolerant society. Sexist prejudices lead to employment discrimination against women, but if machismo is frowned upon and the general idea is that macho attitudes are currently disappearing, it is easy to find any other excuse for all those difficulties that women have when accessing management positions. It can be disguised as whatever you want, incapacity, lack of professionalism, conciliation problems, but they are sexist prejudices.
- It is convenient, in any case, to look at ourselves honestly and evaluate what are those quick judgments that we issue based on cultural, social or personal stereotypes. And keep in mind that in another place, in another situation or surrounded by other people, perhaps we are the people discriminated against due to the prejudices of others.