Sep 11 2008
Ignorance, Prejudice, and Fear… Hand in Hand? (PERIOD 10)
Share your observations about ignorance, prejudice, and fear and how they contribute to, create, or control social and political circumstances. Cite some modern or current examples from global, national, local, or even personal sources. Are they inextricably linked?
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24 responses so far
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Ignorance, prejudice, and fear, in a way, all go hand in hand. Ignorance can be the effect of fear, fear can be a cause of prejudice, prejudice can be because of ignorance which stems from fear, or any other mixture of the three. From what I see, special social and political circumstances always stem from on of these three ideas. For instance in school, “ghetto” people have the automatic reputation that they are tough and mean. Ignorance and prejudice feelings come into play when people do not take the time to get to know someone and make assumptions about what they are like. Fear may be the reason why someone would not take the time to get to know that person. In this example you can easily see that any negative circumstance either/or ignorance, prejudice and fear can be found. Another instance is what is going on during the Obama vs. McCain presidential debate. Both contenders are ignorant of the great that each other is trying to achieve, prejudice simply being Democratic vs. Republican, and fear because both of them are afraid of losing the election therefore bashing each other. Whether in a social or political scene, all three ideas are bad.
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Social and political circumstances are largely associated with ignorance, prejudice, and fear. Each of the three components is linked because, essentially, one leads to the others. Fear may create prejudice, prejudice may create ignorance, and ignorance may be an effect of fear. Everyday we see people in school that correspond with one, if not all, of these ideas. People are often ignorant to others of different cultures because of a fear they may have, whether it be personal or political. This ignorance creates a fear, which may be the reason why people result to being prejudice. Being “cool” and not caring what others have to say about you is something that greatly relays the message of ignorance, fear, and prejudice. Another example is of the political races that people contend in, such as the Presidential elections. Two people are often on the opposite sides of matters and therefore are ignorant of one another. They also have a fear of losing their “battle” and so may often retrieve to being prejudice as a way of dealing with their fear. Overall, these three ideas indeed do go hand in hand.
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In this day and age, ignorance, prejudice, and fear grow stronger and stronger. They are the main reasons why there are “clicks” at school and work. People are ignorant of another person’s culture, religion, ethics, or personality because they are afraid to open their minds. In fear of doing so, they are quick to act and judge others, ignorant that they have prejudice. It is all a cycle, really. Shows on television have people disguised in different races, or pretending to practice different religions. Those people go out in public and notice that they are treated differently, either with more or less respect than they usually get. There is no way to educate people of other people’s differences. They have to be willing to learn. Until then, society will remain disunited by these three factors.
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Fear, ignorance, and prejudice create certain boundaries that create or even control certain social and political situations. Fear of someone different than yourself can cause you to be prejudice of another and be ignorant of their views, which can end in arguing and even fighting. If the walls of ignorance and prejudice can be burned then the fear will dissapear with interaction and allow for social and political peace. One modern example of this would be racism. When one person prejudges, or in other words, has a prejudice towards another, they believe something about that person that most likely is not true. This ignorance of the truth about another can lead to fear of that individual. The judging person may believe that the other is good for nothing and develop a fear of them. If prejudice and ignorance can be overcome, then the fear of the unknown can dissapear as well and simplify the social and political lives of us all.
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Ignorance, fear, and prejudice are often linked. Many people fear what they do not know or understand. Fear often leads to the creation of prejudices, which, if the fear was based on ignorance, the prejudice is completely undeserved, and could lead to unfounded opposition. Fear can also become a cause of ignorance, as people refuse to learn about a certain subject. One prime example of ignorance leading to fear and prejudice is the Large Hadron Collider. One slight possibility of the particle collider was that it would possibly create a very small blackhole. This led to an opinion that the Large Hadron Collider could possibly bring about the end of the world. This belief persisted, despite the general consensus of the scientific community that nothing anywhere close to that would happen. Some of the scientists and technicians working on the LHC even said they received death threats from people fearful, ignorant, and prejudiced to the scientific experiment. Thus, these three ideas can often be found leading to each other.
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I find that ignorance, prejudice, and fear are intertwined. Oftentimes fear and ignorance lead to prejudice. This contributes to many social and political circumstances we see in our lives today. Globally, people are often ignorant about what is going on in countries around the world. This ignorance can lead to fear for, or even prejudice against, another ethnicity or social group. In the upcoming election, ignorance, fear and prejudice are playing a disturbing role. People can be prejudice against Obama for his skin tone, or fearful of McCain’s age. Even in our individual lives, everybody can reflect on a time where they jumped to conclusions based on a fear or prejudice. For the most part these three things are entangled. When you spot one, you can find another as well. It’s a troubling cycle that will take time and great effort to break.
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Ignorance, prejudice, and fear all have the power to create and control social and political circumstances. Each shapes a person’s perspective of the people around them. For example, many people believe that Obama is a Muslim. They are prejudiced against blacks, and against Muslims, so when they see an African-American with a foreign name they automatically assume he is a Muslim. Because of their ignorance and fear, they don’t believe him when he says that he is a Christian, despite the clear evidence that he is. Their ignorance and fear combine to make them blind and deaf to all attempts to prove the truth. Consequently, they refuse to listen to his ideas, or to consider voting for him.
When slavery was abolished, blacks still did not have any civil rights, because many whites were afraid that they would take over and punish the whites and run them out of the country. Many Americans also fear Muslims, because they feel that if they get power, they will abuse it to advance radical Islam and blow up the world with their terrorist connections. These two fears combine in some people’s responses to Barack Obama. There are two major consequences of this: first, if there are enough people with these prejudices, then while African-Americans may have won the right to vote, they will never be elected for national office. But an additional consequence is that many of these prejudiced whites may actually be better served by Obama’s policies than by McCain’s. But because they won’t listen to Obama, they will vote for a candidate who does not represent their interests.
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Fear, Prejudice, and Ignorance. Three negative emotions and qualities that create many social circumstances we deal with every day. Unfortunately, we live in a world filled with hate, where fear and prejudices play a role in our daily lives. Prejudice is stemmed from ignorance, and prejudice only exists because people fear the unknown. Since September 11, 2001, many people of the United States have become fearful of Muslims. Without a second thought, they subconsciously relate them to the catastrophe that took place that day. These people repudiate the truth. That it was a small group of extremists, and not an entire culture. This is a prejudice created by fear and ignorance. On a smaller scale, I can recall many times in my daily life where I experienced prejudice. I member a few years ago doing a walk with my family and synagogue to celebrate Israeli independence. There, at the end of the walk, were protestors holding up signs and shouting at the passing crowd. Their exhibit of intolerance is one I will never forget. Their apprehension of Judaism and lack of knowledge regarding its principals caused them to create an unfair notion about the Jewish people. Most definitely, fear, prejudice and ignorance are inextricably linked. As it is said, bad things come in threes.
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If you really think about it, being ignorant leads to fear. For example, someone who is ignorant towards others is really just intimidated by them. This is a very common thing especially in school with peers. This also causes someone to be prejudice. If a person is intimidated by someone else, they will hate them or strongly dislike them for no apparent reason, other than their race or what they look like. But, these three main qualities of life go way further than adolescence. In the world, people have come to dislike a certain social group because of their background. Even in airports, people who are of the afghani race or anything along those lines are looked at differently because of what went on with the war. People form conclusions about someone else just because of the world’s outlook on everything. Being ignorant is from being feared of what might happen if you went against what the world thinks, which leads to being prejudice about the world’s opinion.
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Ignorance, prejudice, and fear are the consummate destroyers of peaceful social and political interaction. A modern example of this is the ignorance, prejudice, and fear some Americans have for people who come from the Middle East. This can be traced back to the fear of terrorist attack after September 11th, 2001. Because the organizers of the attack were Middle Eastern, ignorance and prejudice stemmed from the event, blossoming into an illogical general fear of people from the Middle East. In this way it is clear that ignorance, prejudice, and fear are intertwined; they will collectively remain an antagonist to positive social and political interaction.
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As Rae Malmrose once asked “Do we fear because we are ignorant, or are we ignorant because we fear?” What exactly is it that society fears? Throughout society fear and ignorance of differences is the formula of prejudice. Moreover, society is afraid of change. Because of this, we are prejudice of certain things which cause us to fear them. With fear comes ignorance, or perhaps the other way around. Either way, society has shown that indeed the three negatives are linked hand in hand, creating many negative social circumstances. One personal experience that I have encountered was while standing in the security line in the air port. While the security guard at the airport saw a kind family of four they assumed my family to be harmless and allowed us to continue through the line with saying no more than “have a nice flight!” However, before it was my turn I watched as the security guard asked a foreigner several questions including which hotel he stayed in, what were in his bags, what was his occupation, why was he in the country, and several other questions that I would not be able to remember. In addition to continuously asking him several questions they asked to see the laptop case that he was carrying and searched his backpack even though he had already gone through the metal detector. Moreover, this clearly shows prejudice of foreigners because after September 11th airports have become more and more secure. However, it seems that because of September 11th air ports are prejudice against anyone foreign to their country which causes them to fear and be ignorant of anything else. This is considered as racial prejudice which after September 11th is seen much more throughout society. Not only in society but prejudice is also found in politics. As this is the first year that both a woman and Muslim were nominees we see that in the past America was very prejudice against what wasn’t the typical “norm”. They feared change and therefore chose a white male for every term so far. Hopefully this year America will see that it is silly to be prejudice, ignorant, and fearful of change. If we never try something new our world will stay the same, showing no change whatsoever. Also in our daily lives at school it is clear that people show prejudice against other students. People automatically look at how students dress to assume their backgrounds. Students wearing nice name brand clothes are labeled as rich while people who wear baggy, “ghetto” style clothing are labeled as “different”. In addition to these separate labels people are prejudice against any clique that they are not in and therefore they each fear the other. All in all, people seem to fear what is unfamiliar to them, and they therefore ignore it, continuing to live their lives forever in the midst of prejudice.
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More often then not, social and political circumstances widely revolve around ignorance, prejudice, and fear. In many cases they are inextricably linked, so that fear creates ignorance, and a combination of both fear and ignorance generates prejudice. In today’s world, it is common for people to hold these unjust “feelings” toward one another, despite what they may or may not know. Society in itself is truly ruled by all three of these aspects. For instance, Norristown is known to many people in Upper Merion as a very unsafe place, because of its overall appearance of an “unclean” environment, and larger population in the non-caucasian race. Because of these factors, people lose trust and jump to irrational conclusions that “all” people of Norristown act and think the same. Likewise, politics extensively circulate around theses notations. Not long ago, potential 2008 presidential candidate Barrack Obama and Hilary Clinton both scrambled to get their opinions and voices heard by Americans across the U.S. Despite all their hard work, sexism still got the best of the voters. Many believed that Clinton was unfit to be president, because she was a woman. At the same time, people did not trust or believe that she was capable, despite the fact that she had much experience in the political field. People failed to listen to the facts and truth, and instead allowed their fear and ignorance take control of their decisions. In certain aspects, it may seem as though ignorance, prejudice, and fear are not really a “big” deal, but the more we sit back, we find the more they are becoming intertwined within our everyday lives.
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Ignorance, Prejudice, and Fear, do they go hand in hand? In my mind, yes, without question. I’d emphasize on how they all link together, but it’d be yet another blog to add to the mix of my fellow classmates who clearly covered this point perfectly already. I want to emphasize more on where we see this happen in society and it political circumstances. I don’t know about you but I hate the politcal commercials. Completely despise them! This is because all you ever hear is one candidate slamming the other candidate. Why? Fear of losing the election. Fear of one candidate being more popular. And those prejudice white voters who are completely sick over our country for allowing a black man to get this far in a presidential election are now classified in my book as unlearned, ignorant people. And I’ll quote Rachel’s blog because I think she said it perfectly, “But because they won’t listen to Obama, they will vote for a candidate who does not represent their interests.” If you go to that messure from fear, and prejudice, then you really deserve to be classified as down right ignorant. Socially, prejudice, fear, and ignorance continue to go hand in hand. I’m sorry but segregation ended years ago, so why on earth do we fear our peers? I heard an awesome story about how on the first day of kindergarten this little white girl goes to school and comes home telling her parents of her new friend, her first best friend. Her parents ask her to describe her. She says that she has brown hair and is as tall as she is and is so pretty. The next day she walks outside of her class holding hand in hand with a little black girl. The parents just smiled and cried because the little girl didn’t see color. I wish that was how our society was. That we didn’t see color, but we do, and for whatever reason we’re afraid of each other. We show fear as the white girl clutches her purse a little tighter as an older black man passes by. And our fear seems to be derived by our ignorance, our lack of knowledge. And prejudice is when you chose to judge people by their race, religion, looks, or beliefs. You see it everyday at school, work, anywhere. Hopefully one day we won’t see color, like the little girl. Until then, to answer your question, yes, prejudice, fear, and ignorance most definately go hand in hand. And unfortunately, we witness this everyday socially and politcally.
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Ignorance, prejudice, and fear are all interlocked. Because of the ignorance people have to certain issues and types of people, prejudices develop. These prejudices are hard to break because of fear to open up and experience new people and things. Ignorance, prejudice, and fear are all factors which shape societies in America. Each area of our country can be found to have mostly similar views. Citizens in one area sometimes become ignorant of how people and issues are in other areas because they have not been exposed to it, when they are exposed to it they feel prejudices and are fearful to interact with different environments.
Confusion between Islamic Extremists and all Islam’s is a perfect example of ignorance, prejudice, and fear all working together. Many Americans were ignorant to the reasons for terrorism. After America began experiencing terrorist attacks from Middle Eastern countries, and her Islam’s mentioned quite often, a prejudice of Islam’s, Arabs, and Middle Easterners was developed. What many Americans did not understand was that Extremist were the terrorist and not all Middle Easterners had hatred for America. It seemed like a fear of the Middle East soon developed and was very hard to break, the fear in Americans was so strong that they wanted to stay ignorant to what was going on to feel safe.
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Biologically, organisms often group with those who resemble their own kind. Geese migrate with geese, fish travel in schools of like fish, ants live with other ants in their underground cities etc. Basically, since the beginning of time, species are drawn to those of the same kind. This is a great tactic for survival, however, in the human world, it causes more evil then good. In society, people often fear the unknown, which, in turn, results in biased opinions. These unfavorable opinions often cause divisions between people who may speak differently, have a different skin pigment, are a different size and shape, or generally portray different features than others. On January 15, 1929 an African American male was born into a prejudice society who was against his “kind”. Despite the odds, this man grew up without hatred toward those who were different and would change the face of America forever. This man was Martin Luther King Jr. During his time and even decades before, white people were known to treat black people with disrespect. They feared thier difference in skin color, hair texture, even speech. The whites turned the blacks into the outcasts of the American society. When I look back to that time period it does not exactly make sense to me. I personally have friends of many different ethnicities, however, my grandmother grew up with predominantly white friends. To me every human is just a precious as the next one. That may sound corny, but that is how I feel. Every human has the same setup on the inside. We all have a heart, a brain, a backbone… So why should the outside matter if the inside is the same? As I mentioned earlier, most animals group with those of the same species…but is it not true that the human race is one species? So why do we discriminate against our own species? There really is no explination other than ignorance of eachother, which leads to fear, which leads to prejudice, which, in the end, leads to unnecessary separtion within the human species. If there was some way to show the world that every shade or size of human is more similar to eachother than is believed, then people would be less likely to fear eachother. Without that fear, people would be able to live together in a civil way, avoiding the constant destruction of eachother that is so often thought to be the norm.
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Humans are an extremely primitive species. We jump to conclusions, we spread rumors, and we base our opinions on the fallacies spread by others. This can be called prejudice…racism…judgment at best. But why do things have to happen this way? Because people are chickens. We are scared of the unknown. When we are scared of something, we avoid it and make assumptions about it. This leads to ignorance because usually when people form an opinion they do not bother to go through the steps to change this opinion. From fear and ignorance comes prejudice because we decide we do not want to associate with the unknown.
The 9/11 tragedy is a prime example of the connections between fear, ignorance, and prejudice. After the World Trade Centers were destroyed, many Americans were angry and fearful of anyone of Arab decent. There were more than a few times when I walked into class and heard people making jokes about Middle Eastern Americans being possible plane hijackers. This is where ignorance comes in. Some Americans began to assume all Arabs were connected to terrorist activities. And that is just not fair. Even so, seven years later there are still those people who make a big deal when they get on a plane with someone with caramel colored skin or a religious headscarf. That is prejudice in the flesh. They can’t see past their own fears.
If we, as humans, can try a little harder to get past our fears, we will be less ignorant, and we will pave the way for less prejudice, discrimination, rumors, and judgment.
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Ignorance, fear and prejudice are all connected. One example of how these three things have created each other is the racial profiling done against some ethnicities. For example, someone of Middle Eastern decent is much more likely to be suspected as a “terrorist” when going through airport security than a Caucasian man. The ignorance of our culture of the workings of the Middle East, the fact that not every Muslim or Middle Eastern person is a political extremist breeds fear. If people knew that Muslims are mostly peaceful people and understood Middle Eastern culture better then maybe they would be less likely to think of them as a threat or a terrorist. Once people have a fear of something, to deal with their fear, they put up the guard of prejudice. This prejudice is what causes someone to profile a Middle Eastern person, immediately upon seeing him or her as a “terrorist” or a “threat”. Ignorance is a very powerful thing, since sometimes what we don’t know can hurt us more than what we do.
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In the modern day world, ignorance usually leads to prejudice, which leads to fear. Because somebody is uninformed about the facts, they can start making up intolerant assumptions, which can be believed and thus result in fear. This fear is exemplified in many different circumstances. In today’s society, different races or religions are feared because of prejudices made by ignorant people. This also affects who is voted for different political positions. For example, some may be scared to elect someone of the Islam faith because of the events of September 11th. An issue today is the prejudice against women preventing some from voting Hilary Clinton for president. Ignorance can grow into fear which can change the outlook of society.
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Ignorance, in its most basic form, is defined as a lack of knowledge. To be prejudiced is to judge people before gaining knowledge. And fear is the unfortunate cause and too-common result of prejudice. These three intangible realities feed off each other to grow and mutilate our tangible world. Fear can exist without the others, but otherwise they are inextricably linked. Together, they form a phenomenon more contagious than chicken pox and less curable than cancer. They contribute primarily to social inequality. By giving justification to arbitrary, nonsensical initiatives which infect our sense of normalcy, they become impossible to deal with, let alone eradicate without major political and social upheaval. I could be speaking, of course, of any number of wars, revolutions, or migrations that fill our world’s history.
The Spanish Inquisition: a textbook example of prejudice’s monumental affect. The Crusades; the Reformation; the Holocaust. The caste system; the feudal system; the plantation system. All caused or continued due to some aspect of this phenomenon. Ok, so the potato famine and subsequent migration probably don’t fit into the mix. Nonetheless, this problem is still going strong in today’s society. A significant percentage of Americans don’t like the idea of a black president. A sloppily dressed twenty-something is less likely to land a job at a law firm than a suit-clad, grey-haired forty-something. Curiously, now that society has noticed that this is a problem, new developments have arisen to try to combat it. “Equal pay for equal work” and “equal opportunity employer” are phrases that have become part of our culture. Our obsession with equality or the lack thereof grow with every passing year. But it all begs the question: How are we ever to become equal; to be rid of this ignorance, prejudice and fear; if we’re so focused on the fact that we are not?
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We have an inherent fear of the unknown… a survival instinct to protect us from anything and anybody foreign and strange. We also suffer from a need to categorize and group things so as to establish order and a sense of belonging and purpose in our lives. These two natural human behaviors produce ignorance, or a lack of knowledge and awareness, which in turn, forms prejudices, or biased opinions based on that insufficient knowledge. Because prejudices are almost always formed on speculation and generalizations, they instill even more fear of the seemingly enigmatic as we continually spurn those different from us. This tireless circle is represented in today’s American foreign policy. Barack Obama has recently been criticized for calling for an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Iran. Those that stubbornly use Munich as a metaphor believe that Obama is supporting a policy of appeasement for not agreeing to use military tactics to counter threats from Iran. In America, Iranians, no… all Middle Easterners since 9/11, are portrayed as terrorists and extremists of a backward culture. Instead of trying to understand and to better relations with foreign nations, the United States has continued to intimidate them using our own terrorist policies, such as military presence in foreign lands. John McCain, whose campaign is based on fear, has even insensitively joked about Iran. He sung a rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann” by replacing the lyrics with “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” and responded to a question about increased cigarette exports to Iran with “maybe that’s a way of killing them.” His ignorance, which breeds these prejudice and hate-filled comments, is evident when he makes false and uninformed statements like that Iran, a Shiite country, is training the Sunni militant group, Al-Qaeda. Fear into ignorance… ignorance into prejudice… and prejudice into fear back again.
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Jihad! To the Orthodox Muslims, ‘Jihad’ is a mission to edify the world of the traditional and peaceful teachings of Allah. To the Muslim extremists, it is a death sentence to anyone considered an ‘infidel’. ‘9/11’ was the hand of Allah striking against the western world; the most visible mark of extremist thought. In the past, the Nazis believed that they were the master race and that they needed to rid the world of its ‘impurities’ so that they can create a utopian society for Aryans. The United States is not immune to this, either. The Japanese internment camps of the Second World War were akin to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. What do these major events have in common? Ignorance is not always bliss. Ignorance is a device used by propagandists to create fear. In turn, fear fuels our prejudices and vice versa. Sir Francis Bacon once said that “knowledge is power” and by keeping people ill-informed, the people can be molded and inculcated in any way to agree in one’s politics.
The root of fear and prejudice is ignorance. And what better way to control the masses than with fear? If they make their decisions based on fear, their decisions become predictable. Also, if their decisions are based on contrived information, their decisions can be controlled. When the outcome can be controlled and predicted, then in essence, the decision was made for them. At that point, who is in control?
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Everyone knows that seniors in high school are terrible bullies that pick on freshmen, right? Well, no. The statement above is created from fear, ignorance, and the prejudice that is formed by them because all too often in both political and social circumstances, the three play a linked role.
Naturally, one would be afraid of entering a new and unfamiliar situation such as high school so it is understandable that a freshman would be fearful, especially of the eldest seniors, but it is not this fear alone that separates what could be a harmonious relationship. Ignorance also plays a major part because freshman simply do not know that /most/ seniors do not make it their singular goal to harass them. This duo of fear and ignorance leads to the prejudice that so many 9th graders have of seniors being arrogant bullies. Unfortunately, this formula does not pertain solely to student relationships, fear and ignorance creating prejudice exists across the world, in all types of situations.
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Ignorance, Prejudice and Fear can link together in several different ways. Sometimes people are afraid of what they don’t know. If somebody is ignorant about something, it means they are uneducated. Americans like to feel accomplished, like they know everything. Therefore, if they are new to something, be it a certain race, sex, religion, town, state, country, sport, or activity, sometimes they may push away from it. Usually we just avoid something we don’t want to learn about, maybe because of fear. Fear of what could come out of it. What we don’t know can’t hurt us. Right? On some occasions however, we can be prejudice towards it. It could be because we fear it to be more significant than what we are used to. Maybe we don’t want to give someone credit for something, or maybe we just get bad vibes. Ignorance, Prejudice, and fear definitely lock together in a pretty tight bond.
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Ignorance, prejudice and fear are all related in some way. Usually, Ignorance leads to prejudice that leads to fear. Many people are prejudice towards people of difference race and of difference cultures and this leads to fear. A good example is people from the Middle East. Many people consider then terrorist just with association of the terrorist attacks. So people treat them differently and in mean ways due to the fear that was put on the Americans by their people. So this ignorance that people put on these people of different cultures leads to prejudice because they fear the people. So now our social interactions are being lessened because of the fear that is being inflicted on people.
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