The word prejudice (or foredeeming) is most often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people or a person because of gender, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race/ethnicity, language, nationality or other personal characteristics. It can also refer to unfounded beliefs and may include "any unreasonable attitude that is unusually resistant to rational influence." Gordon Allport defined prejudice as a "feeling, favorable or unfavorable, toward a person or thing, prior to, or not based on, actual experience."
Read more about Prejudice: Historical Approaches, Contemporary Theories and Empirical Findings, Controversies and Prominent Topics, Multiculturalism, Reducing Prejudice
Famous quotes containing the word prejudice:
“Neither years nor books have yet availed to extirpate a prejudice then rooted in me, that a scholar is the favorite of Heaven and earth, the excellency of his country, the happiest of men. His duties lead him directly into the holy ground where other men’s aspirations only point. His successes are occasions of the purest joy to all men. Eyes is he to the blind; feet is he to the lame. His failures, if he is worthy, are inlets to higher advantages.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... prejudice marks a mental land mine.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)