Saturday, April 28, 2007
"Prejudice is a disease we can never get rid of." Discuss.
What is the definition of prejudice? As stated in Wikipedia, the word prejudice referred to a prejudgmental statement of ill doing, or an evaluation or decision made before the facts of a case could be properly determined and weighed.This usage was subsequently broadened to include any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence.
Personally, prejudice can never be gotten rid of. In today's world, the human population to too big to ensure that prejudice does not exist in every corner of Earth. People would usually have different opinions of other people, whether is it different race, religion or sex. These opinions that are not based on true facts , reason or experience are the roots to many conflicts in the world. One example of prejudice is the racial prejudice.
In the United States of America, African American are often accused as criminals and called as "nigger". However, in actual fact, 97% of the crimes in US are committed intra-racially, as stated in the Winfrey Oprah video. Because of the way they behave and those tattoos that they have on them, they are being labelled as "bad people". Many people would also think that blacks cannot be degree-holders but whites can. Therefore, this could lead to discrimintion as well.
What is more troubling is the probability that the refusal to treat those who inject drugs or who are infected with hepatitis C and HIV is a manifestation of social prejudice rather than fear of disease. Both of these viral diseases are associated with injecting drug use, a chronic relapsing condition that many still consider more a sign of moral weakness or personal indulgence than a symptom of a treatable condition. The consistent underfunding of drug treatment, the unwillingness to plan prevention programs such as syringe exchanges, and a tendency toward simplistic slogans ("Just say no!") suggest a continuing societal blind spot. People who are known to do drugs, or people who get diseases that might mean they do drugs, are likely to become non-people, disposable people, neglected people. In the rapidly evolving world of care, payment for and treatment of mental illness and addictions remain separate from other payment and treatment systems. Even Congressional action in support of equity seems to have had little impact on this segregation.
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/416734
Although these issues are announced and make known to the world, we would still need to change the mindset of those of make prejudice statements. However, these group of people is too big, that is why prejudice would be a disease that is not curable.