Prejudice and Discrimination
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I think one of the main sources of discrimination is our inate fear of the unknown, things that are different.
We tend to prefer faces, body types and other characteristics, that are simmilar to us, or those that fit “the canon” – are universally recognised as attractive, due to cultural influences.As for the situations presented in the comic strips – fortunately I don’t witness those stituations very often in real life, but in the Internet some masks really fall off and people show their uninhibited racism, bigotry, mysoginy, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, body-shaming etc.
Sadly, I’ve alsofellfallen victim to such behaviours, mostly by my peers and acquaintances and I can definately say that it left a mark on me – it made me more reserved, anxious around others, lowered my self-esteem.-
Hi Joanna, you’ve mentioned that the Internet is promoting/reinforcing prejudice and descrimination. Can you give us any particular example?
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I’ve encountered such behaviours mostly on social media – not directed towards particular people, but generally about whole groups, like LGBTQ+ community or women.
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Hello! As you mention internet as a source of prejudice and descrimination what is consicuous in it is for sure body-shaming and dissemination of the perfect figure. It is very harmful especially for young people who are unconsciously motivated to have that “model-kind” body figure.
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I agree with Joanna, fear of the unknown is probably the biggest reason why people are prejudiced. It’s also the reason why there are so many stereotypes – they make it easier (or even too easy) to judge who’s good and who’s not. Discrimination is when we act on our prejudices. For example, when someone thinks that women aren’t as smart as men, they might not give woman a job just beecause of her gender.
Personally I’ve witnessed some situations like that. I come from a small town where people are very closed-minded. It’s not hard to hear a comment about someone’s sexuality or people talking about people of color in a prejudiced way.-
Yes, you’re right, Iza. We may say that prejudice is attitude and discrimination is a behaviour. What situations have you witnessed? Did you react to them in any way?
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Well, I’m bisexual so I’ve heard some comments questioning if I’m sure I’m bi or even people saying that I can still date a man and live “a normal life”. One of my childhood friends said that she wouldn’t date a guy who liked her just because she heard he was bi. Hearing it is very hurtful and I usually point out that people are being biphobic or homophobic but unfortunately some people seem to tak pride in that.
Other than that I try to stop people from using slurs when I notice that they do it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.-
I’ve always thought that young adults, even when they come from conservative backgrounds, are more open-minded than middle-aged people. That’s why your situation is surprising to me. Do you still socialise with these people or did you break off contact?
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I think that some people just feel comfortable in their bubble where everyone is like them and they won’t change it if they don’t care.
I see them maybe twice a year. I never actually came out to them cause I didn’t feel comfortable enough so they don’t have any problem with inviting me to meet with them. But I don’t try to become any closer to them, I’ve found much better friends later in life.-
I heard or read somewhere that stereotypes that we have are more likely to be about the groups that we do not and have never identified with. We see our groups as more diverse and complex, because we are inside of them, while we see other groups as pretty uniform. So we do not need many encounters with members of the group to form an opinion and because we often are not educated very well about others or start with negative or fearfull emotions, we quickly reinforce them.
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In my opinion, we are not born with prejudices and stereotypes. I think it’s a learned behaviour. As children, we can only see that someone is different, but we don’t valuate?? it. It’s the parents and peers (
learnedtaught by their parents) and some kinds of mediawho showsthat show what to discriminate against, what is right and wrong. I think our upbringing has a main role in causing prejudices and discrimination.-
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Hi Eliza, I agree – we are not born with prejudices. How would you bring up a child so they would not have any prejudices and would not discriminate against other people?
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I think it would be a very hard job to do, almost impossible. It is important to help child to explore the world and meet new people. A child should have contact with many religions, nationalities and races. Parents should support child curiosity and learn them how to be sensitive. And what’s the most important – they should set an example for them.
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I think you are right and it is important for a kid both to explore the world, different cultures and different people, and to have a right example. Children see, children do, as we know, and they should see other people being treated with kindness.
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Do you remember the research about babies, that we saw once in class? It was about the prejudices or the seed of it, that is present in babies.
I think that being a bigot may sadly be our nature and that proper socialisation and education is crucial for developing an adult who is able to recognise their biases and work to overcome them.I believe that the best way to get rid of a prejudice is to have many experiences with a different people from that group. So – the more diverse is the social surrounding of a person growing up, the more open they may be for people in the future maybe?
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I agree with you Eliza. The perfect example we can get from observing the school process – the older children are, the worse they are for eachother. More prejudiced, more judgmental. They actually”learn” how to stereotype.
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How about teachers? I’ve read somewhere that some teachers (the research was conducted in the US by Harari) discriminate against students with certain names.
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I think it can works very often – unfortunetaly. Maybe it is connected with classical conditioning. Once the teacher had a wise “X” named student in a class and then he associate all “X” named students with him/her and expected them to be wise. And on the opposite way it is probably works the same.
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If it was researched in the US then maybe it was about racism? There are stereotypes saying that black people are less smart than white people and that asian children study a lot. Maybe the teachers were judging children based on if their names sounded white or not and based on this they decided how much attention they would dedicate to a child. So if they thought that black children won’t do as good as others at school they might be paying less attention to them.
I didn’t read about this study so I’m just guesing
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By older, what age exactly do you mean?
from my personal experience children start being horrible to each other around age 10 and then stops about 15, when they are a little more matured.
And also that may be just me, but I believe they are horrible just because… and not for any good reason like a stereotype or so. They may learn that “gay” or “black” is an insult so they use it, but not really caring about the meaning.
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Hi Eliza!
I also think that media has a great impact on our way of thinking. Sometimes, they can manipulate us and made us think in a concrete way. They often show discrimination which young people watch and learn bad behaviours.
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I think prejudice stems mostly from our need to categorize the confusing world around us. We want to put it in simple boxes, so we don’t have to think too much while meeting new people. And it served its purpose many years ago, but right now, when we don’t face nearly as many dangerous situations in our daily life, it just means many people get treated badly because of something they can’t control, like their gender, sexuality or skin color.
Unfortunately, I can think of many examples of situations similiar to the ones shown in the comic strips, such as sexist comments I’ve heard at work, homophobic/biphobic protests at Pride, comments on the street. Fortunately, I’ve never had to experience racism myself, but I always try to defend POC when I hear any racist comments made by people in my life.
I also know that I am not free of prejudices, so I try to consciously change my behavior, when I feel like my dislike for someone is unfounded.-
Indeed, we used schemas/schemata to categorise people, objects and situations and it’s for our own good. If we didn’t do it we would need to take time to think through everything we experience. In the long run, life would be difficult. But categorising has a dark side to it.
What kinds of prejudice exist in Poland?-
From what I’ve seen or experienced it’s mostly prejudice against people of color, women, LGBTQA+, immigrants and people with disabilities/illnesses.
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Prejudice is an attitude. Prejudice can be innate as survival mechanisms. It is about showing hostility to strangers and favorability your family. But some of concrete prejudice we are learning. We have antipathy to people in other groups, just because they are in other group. We are in groups in which we identify. We treat our group better than others because in this way we increase our self-esteem. Therefore, we also do not see any differences in the members of other groups and they are homogeneous for us. Hence, members of different groups behave unfairly towards the opposite group simply because they are not in the same group. And this is called discrimination.
It’s hard for me to remember if I’ve ever been in a similar situation to the ones from a comic book. But this passage entitled “Prejudices” showed me that each of us behaved like an elderly lady at least once in our lives. We want to look like people without prejudices, and when we show that we have some of them, we try to explain/rationalise it somehow. Each of us has some prejudices resulting from society in which we live.-
Camila, we have in-groups and out-groups and naturally we favour more those from in-group and discriminate against those from out-groups.
Who do Poles usually discriminate against?-
In my opinion Poles usually discriminate people who are different from them. I mean for example black people – they have different skin tone and other culture, for Poles they are just “lazy monkeys” and they don’t care if this is true or not. Other example is German people or Russian. Poles assume that every German or Russian is embodiment of evil. They don’t like them because thery are just born in countries which whom fought with us in wars.
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I agree with everything Kamila said but i want to add something. Poles, despite being really judgemental nationality “from the first sight” like for people of color, are “unique” with changing opinions about certain person. For example when one polish person is in likehood with l, let’s say, russian person but polish guy doesn’t know about his nationality. When the polish guy discovers it then friendship starts to vanish despite any positive feeling before. For me this “change” is the worst and scariest thing in Poles intellectuality.
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Hi Kamila, that’s an interesting reason you brought up – we want to boost our self esteem, hence we identify with a group that is succeeding and we treat them better. Can you think of any example of this – identifying with a group and discriminating against another simply because we want to feel better about ourselves?
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Hi Wiktoria 🙂 This is really good question, I have to think about it….Imagine we are in-group with rich people. Our parents have taught us that only people who work hard have lots of money. That people with less money are less ambitious and lazy. So we are getting start to think that is a true. Thanks to that we think that we are better, because if we had money we are hard-working and intelligence and we are getting start think that “poor people” are just lazy stupid. We don’t want to think that maybe if someone doesn’t have money have some issuise with family or health.
Maybe this is an exaggerated example, but I tried to present somehow what I meant haha
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Hi Kamila, have you ever witnessed prejudice behaviour? Do you react somehow in this kind of situations?
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Hi Ola! I remember when I was a kid and attended to primary school. In my class we had a black girl and my classmates taunted with her. I couldn’t do too much because I was just a kid, but I showed her affection. I was for her nice and helped her with any problems. Not onyl me, other girls from my class also was nice for her, only boys had some issues with that she was black.
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Prejudice can have its roots in evolution and how we perceived other people way back. In order to survive, we had to make categories in our minds of safe and unsafe objects. We had to quickly decide whether a thing we see is a potential threat or not. The need for these quick decisions prevailed, even though it’s not necessary for us to make them anymore. We live in a world when our life isn’t at risk as much as it used to be for our ancestors.
But prejudice is just an attitude you have towards some objects. How the way you act in influenced by these biases – is discrimination. You can discriminate people because of how they look, how they act, by treating them poorly, worse than you treat other people, just because they are a bit more or less different than what you accept.
The comic strips showed a lot of different examples of prejudice and discrimination – how we can think or behave around people different than us or what we expect people to be. I think one of the important issues was the one tackled in comic called “Hoary old chestnuts”. It showed that we can say how we believe equality is important and it’s outraging that people can think less of others and yet we still can act completely differently. It this case, it was about discrimination against women working. The guy was angry somebody could say that women should stay at home so there would be more jobs available – and yet, when told their new boss is a woman, he was shocked and looked distressed. Sometimes I think it’s hard to blame people for their prejudices, because they are so hardwired into our heads that it really is our go-to reaction. But what really matters is how we put conscious effort into changing our outdated/preconceived beliefs, getting completely rid of the vile, harmful cognitive schemas.-
A very well-written piece of text. What do we usually do when people or situations don’t fit our preconceived beliefs?
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There are many things that can happen in such situation. We probably experience cognitive dissonance, when our cognitive schemas don’t fit with what we experience, and it isn’t a pleasant thing to feel. So we may rush to our defense mechanisms and we may rationalize what we see – we may say it’s just an exception or the conditions are different than usual. We can also try to escape the situation so we can get at ease again – out of sight, out of mind. On the other hand, we may try to change our beliefs, modify our schemas. But that’s a tough task in my opinion because when we believe in something our whole life, we identify with is so much it becomes a part of our identity and we can’t simply get rid of something that shapes us.
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The article “Yes, Looks do Matter” mentions Barack Obama who has challeged the stereotyped image of a black person, yet many people don’t question the stereotype itself. Instead they do something else. Do you remember what it is?
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That’s right — Barack Obama became an exception. Some people simply created a subtype to their stereotype of a black person — a black proffesional, who is smart and educated. But they don’t believe the majority is like that. They can maintain the stereotype and moderate their cognitive dissonance.
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Hi Wiktoria 🙂 Do you think that is possible to teach children to don’t have any prejudices?
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I think it can be done to some extent. We can’t ignore that our children would definitely have other influences in their lives, like their peers or teachers at school or characters in books and movies, but we can’t simply resign from giving them a good example and leading the way just because there will be other people with different opinions. I believe that living up to your beliefs, showing that being different does not mean being less deserving of respect and love and letting your kids explore the world and diversity in it is the key to diminishing the role of prejudices.
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During reading comic strips (especially the part with a daughter who is trying to tell her mother that her boyfriend is vegetarian) I recalled a strange situation that happened to my friend Alice. She was seeing a boyfriend whose parents were extremely religious. Their relations were fine until they found out that she’s an atheist. They took for granted that his son will have a catholic wedding with a catholic fiancee and they didn’t accept their son’s love relationship. When a couple started to share an apartment, parents automatically cut contact with them. It was a terrible experience for both sides causes by religious prejudice.
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Hi Weronika. I think that’s a terrible story. I feel really sorry for the couple. They did nothing wrong – only lived up to their beliefs (or lack of those). But I must say it’s amazing they didn’t give in to pressure. If you were in their situation and at risk of losing contact with your parents or parents-in-law, would you act the same way?
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Yes, I think that the couple was brave and strong. But this situation was a kind of disaster for them because everyone needs to have a healthy relationship with mother or father. If I were in their shoes I would probably behave in the same way. I think that parents usually have some expectations which we, as children, won’t come up to. But on the other way, they should support their children no matter what. Any religion or sexual orientation shouldn’t destroy it.
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I couldn’t agree more, our relationship with our parents is very important for our well-being. And I too believe that religion or sexual orientation or who your child decides to be with shouldn’t be a factor in loving them because there are more important things we should worry about. As long as nobody’s hurt, I can’t see a reason why you could cut all contact with someone so previously dear to you.
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Everything in the name of religion 🙂 It’s a sad story and I probably wouldn’t expect a happy ending to it, unless the man’s parents saw reason.
Would you say that you are free of prejudices, Veronica?-
Unfortunately, I’m not. But I usually try to analyze my thoughts about others and verify them as fast as possible. Conversations with people who are different than me are inspirations and allow me to see how difficult it is to live in a society full of racisms, religious, etc. prejudices. I think that we are not allowed to discriminate against others without getting to know them.
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Ah such stories are interesting. I apologise if I appear as rude but I wonder sometimes how mixing of religions works out because if both partiers have different beliefs they still have to agree to something or their relationship won’t work (like what kind of marriage it will be, how will they bring up their children if they marry and if they’ll have any). I feel sorry for the couple as the girl will be likely antagonised for everything wrong by his parents. And again sorry if I offended you with my way of thinking.
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I have a case which would be a good example that this kind of relationship can work. A few days ago I found out that my lecturer had a mixed religion marriage, which means that he is an atheist and his wife is a catholic. Their wedding was in the church and the only exception was that she was swearing to God to love his husband, when he was swearing to her (not to God) to love her wife. They are happy together and raised two children (who are adults now). I think, that in this case, they had many things in common, they loved each other and were ready to accept their differences.
But, it is understandable that for some people it is important to have a partner of the same religion.
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I believe that prejudice is something that we learn, kids don’t mind colour of the skin or gender of their playmates. As kids grow up they observe behaviour of “wiser” older people and adapt. Prejudice may be linked to discrimination in a way that negative stereotypes help us paint a picture of another person and no matter if it’s accurate or not it lets us pick an approach toward that person. The easiest example would be old people from cotton plantations areas, maybe not all but many would just assume that some people are better than others just because of colour of their skin, maybe even believe that some are less human. Personally I’m curious how people perceive racists jokes. Is it always wrong to joke about such matters? Maybe it’s fine if you “crack” such a joke when affected party isn’t listening?
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In my opinion joking about such matters is always wrong. I always feel uncomfortable when I have to listen to it. Even if for someone it is “just a joke” and the person is not really prejudiced, the other person who listen to it can acquire this way of thinking. We shouldn’t broaden it.
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Come to think of it, I can’t recall any racist jokes. By the way, do you remember Tuwim’s children’s poem “Murzynek Bambo”? Do you think it’s offensive?
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I never thought anything of it, because I knew that poem from early childhood, but I’ve seen many black people say they find it incredibly racist, because it perpetuates many harmful stereotypes.
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I think is nor the poem which is racist but the way People reffer it. I heard that this poem wasn’t so bad and Tuwim for sure didn’t want to be well known abroad for being racist. At time of him writing this poem some words doesnt have such bad sounding as today, f.e. “murzynek”. But then, years and years later some mischievous groups of people started to use this poem in a racist way – yelling fragments of this poem at marches etc. Poem is not racist, usage of it can be.
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Whole thing is in understanding the concept of “sexist, racist jokes”. Personally, I often take part in situations when people make jokes about … racist, sexist, homophobic jokes. So this is undoubtedly the subject of these jokes. I don’t see anything wrong with it as long as the comedy is done in good taste and doesn’t hurt anyone.
Humor is an extremely broad topic, understood in many different ways, which in principle has one goal – to entertain. The canon of comedy is laughing at yourself. Excluding certain features (gender, sexual orientation, nationality, skin color, eyes or anything else) from this topic by the community’s stereotypical approach would also be discriminatory. Attempts to impose restrictions on the abstract of humor would be naive. The fact that people, in their stupidity, use it to hurt other people should not mean we can’t use them in a good way.
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I feel like these kind of jokes are only to be made by those whom the joke affects. For example, I’m bisexual, so I often make jokes about that and I don’t mind other people laughing along. But I never make jokes about, for example, being gay or black, because I think it’s not my place to joke about that. I didn’t go through their struggles, so I would never laugh at them. I think that it’s just another way of discriminating and then telling the affected people that they “simply don’t have a sense of humor”.
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While reading the comic book, I remembered of a situation my two friends had told me. They are a homosexual couple.. They were in one of the shopping centers in Warsaw. They were drinking coffee in a cafe, talking and holding hands. At one point, security guards came to their table. He started shouting at them, trying to chase them out of the cafe. He insulted them and said “I cannot allow SOMETHING LIKE THAT happen in my service!”
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Hi, Karolina, that situation sounds terrible! What was the reaction of other people in that cafe? Did nobody stand up to the security guard?
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Unfortunately not. It’s unbelievable. Other people pretended not to see the whole situation. Fortunately, my friends remained calm and talked to the boss of the gentleman who verbally attacked them.
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Unfortunately Poland hasn’t widely accepted homosexual relationships. It’s a bit disheartening that that guard could possibly avoid any repercussions due to some ridiculous excuse and/or a fact that probably no-one made a complaint on the said guard.
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I find it very disappointing. My friend had a situation that when her parents found out that she was a lesbian they didn’t want to know her anymore. They told her that she couldn’t live with them and that they weren’t family any more. It was terrifying because she was underage and she didn’t know what to do.
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I once had a lesbian student. Not that she told me this but I could see it from her behaviour. It bothered me because I had the impression that she was flaunting it either to embarass me and other people in class or because she wasn’t thinking. Either way, it was uncomfortable. Just for the sake of clarity, I would be as much embarrassed if a male student was showing too much affection to a female student.
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She moved out to her cousin who is very kind and tolerant person. Malwina really helped her because she gave her home, love and went with her to a therapist because Natalie had depression caused by her parents’ behaviour.
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That’s so great, that there are people out there like that.
Homelessness disproportionally affects lgbt teenagers. It is so hard to believe that any parent would try to “get rid” of their children.
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My friend from high school had the same situation. Not only was he humiliated by his peers, but also by his family. I cannot imagine how difficult and devastating it must be, when your parents don’t give you a support in such an important period in your life. (when you are discovering who you are and who you wanna be)
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In my opinion, prejudice has its’ roots in fear of an unknown. Everything new or different make us uncomfortable in some way and often we don’t want to get to know different culture, way of being etc. because it expect from us sort of involvement and even get out of our comfort zone. Prejudice can be somehow a form of discrimination, because it’s a first step of it. A person prejudice somebody or something and then, if it involes, person start to have a negative attidute to this. I’ve witnessed something similar to the situation presented in comic. My uncle has negative attitude to the foreginers, he doesn’t want them in Poland, but at the same time, he enjoys going on vacations abroad and he doesn’t mind the other culture, which he meets there.
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A similar sitiation was shown in the comic strip about Mr Nimby. In his own town, the sight of Muslims enrages him, but with a change of setting, he becomes appreciative of their traditional clothings, music, food, etc.
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yes, when I was wrtining about my example, I found this situation similar.
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Hi Julia, I think it’s pretty common among Poles to be like your uncle – they don’t like people of different ethnicity and culture in our country, but as soon as they step outside, they admire diversity and think it’s “exotic”. Do you engage in any conversations with your uncle about this topic?
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Hi girls, I wanted to ask the same question (about talking with Julia’s uncle) 😀 My grandpa used to be like that (hating every nation except his own), but after my parents, my cousins and I talked with him and showed our points of view, he changed his mind and become more tolerant. Moreover, when my friend from Germany visited me, he wanted to meet her and he was really friendly and welcoming. (I hope that it wasn’t just outwardly)
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I tried, but with miserable effect. He denied my observation. Maybe some people need stronger arguments to beat their hard line.
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I think that prejudice has many sources. Sometimes it’s the fear of the unknown, sometimes it’s because our parents told us that people different from us were the bad ones and sometimes it’s religion. The worst part for me is that prejudice often starts at a young age because adults have a huge impact on innocent children. Unfortunately lots of commercials show perfect white people,
whatwhich doesn’t help in changingview of the societysocietal views. A few days ago my sisterhad to write about that as her homeworkwas set/asked to write a paper about it as a homework assignment. It was very interesting for both of us because wehasn’thaven’t noticed that before.-
Hi Aurelia!
I totally agree with you, that it develops at a very young age. We should definitely encourage educating young children more often. I think especially here it’s hard since Poland doesn’t have many POC so people are just ignorant to know more about their culture.
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Hi, you’re both right. It is horrifying how some parents are able to even lock their children against people who are diverse in some way instead of teaching that everyone is different and that is beautiful.
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Zimbardo in “Psychology – Core Concepts” mentions that there’re five sources of prejudice (Allport, 1954; Aronson, 2004):
– dissimilarity and social distance
– economic competition
– scapegoating
– conformity to social roles
– media stereotypingWhat each is about?
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Media stereotyping is such a good example for prejudice especially social media. People on social media tend to follow and generally interact only with the content they already agree with(the algorithm for Facebook posts works this way for example) creating an echo chamber. Since most of the people on SM only see what they already agree on or what they already are finding something or someone who doesn’t match it makes them less favorable towards it. It leads to conflict and stereotypes bloom beautifully from that since it creates an “us vs them” situation. People are super quick to make the jump from simple difference of opinion to straight up verbal violance.
And don’t even get me started on beauty standards in media as a whole.
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Daniel, perhaps not everyone is familiar with the expression “echo chamber”. Can you, please, explain what it is?
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Echo chamber is an enviroment in which one’s beliefes are only amplified and repeated. For example if I were to join a Facebook group of garlic bread lovers my opinion of garlic bread being yummy is only going to be amplified by other members of the group. While it’s not bad in my example because garlic bread truly is yummy such an enviroment could be virually anything including racist or other bigoted opionions/beliefs.
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I think conformity to social roles is when we are expected to behave in a typicall way depending on the situation. We can change our behaviour and beliefs in public. People, while watching others, learn how to behave in a certain situation.
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Scapegoating is an interesting source of prejudice. It’s when you blame a person or a group for something that is not their fault. The practise can be conducted by an individuals against individuals (“It’s your falt, that the window is broken”), individuals against groups (“I am unemployed, because the foreigners took all the jobs”), groups against individuals (“Kate is the reason why our project failed”) and groups against groups (Nazis and Jews). It’s often caused by idividuals/groups projecting unwanted thoughts and feelings onto the scapegoat.
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I think the same way as others here. We are not born with stereotypes. We aquire them as our language from where we are – our family, primary school, playmates – especially when kids. Then when older we dive into web that it’s full of racist, sexist, homophobic and even worse content. We read, we learn. Our brains constructs some kind of boxes. One for “a typical blond” that we know from jokes told by our uncle, one for “a typical gay” that we know from ana read in web, one for “a typical catholic devotee” that we know because one taught us in school. And then we just tag. It’s just so much easier for ours cognitive system to have and use these boxes.
Prejucide is related to discrimination. Discrimination is “the next step” od prejucide that can be taken when suitable circustamces appear, for example when a black man bumps us on the street by accudent. Nowadays I wouldn’t scream at him “you nigga” or something like that because I know a lot of black people and my cognitive representation of “a black man” is complex, elaborated and I know (from my expeirence that I’ve also learnt) that this black man is equal to me. I’m aware of it. -
Hello, reading about these sources especially scapegoating stucked in my head. I guess we can notice it in most of social groups for example in school, work environment. It mostly occurs by eliminating one person from a group. It happens when mechanisms of projection and displacement are utilized. I guess we can find a right example of scapegoating in the comic we were supposed to read on page 13.
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I agree with my peers. I think sources of prejudice are just learned through observation in school, from parents, friends etc. It’s realtion to discrimination is that id leads to it. You start discriminating others because you have certain prejudices about them that can be realted to race, gender, orientation, disability etc.
I personaly haven’t expirienced any situation like in the comics strips but my sister did and she told me about it. It was related to orientation and disability so i am a big fighter for treating people no matter their differences.
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Yes Julia I agree with you. Also it must be really painful for you to know how people treat you sister. Knowing that there’s nothing that you can do about it… It’s just horrible.
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Hey,
thank you for feeling for me. Yes, it’s pretty hard since she has to deal with it on a daily basis and i unfortunately can’t do much about it. I try as hard as i can but i hate that i try to tell her all the reasons she’s amazing while no one tells the ‘bullies’ that they are acting wrong.
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Hi Julia!
It must be sad watching your own sister experience discrimination. I admire you for being such a fighter! I hope that your sister finds strenght in herself not to care about the bullies anymore. -
No one should be treated that way, yours sister’s history evoked in me some kind of fighter against discrimination. Hope she will believe in herself and won’t listen of what any bully says.
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Prejudice more often than not leads to discrimination and unfortunatelly events such as those presented in the comic stripes are pretty much a reality. Great example would be school bullies who often make fun of any characteristic feature of anyone unpopular enough to become their target. Even more unfortunatelly not all bullies grow up to be smarter and more compassionate giving us racist, sexist or homophobic adults
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Hi Daniel, I agree, school bullies are often cruel and they mindlessly pick at less popular kids, targeting them simply because they are different in some ways. Have you ever witnessed a situation like this? Do you know of any bullies who maybe grew up fine and became smarter after they had left school?
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I agree with you Daniel. But to be honest I don’t think it’s only about unpopular kids. Popular ones often are bullied too. School can be awful for everyone.
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Yeah I’ve done it all: I’ve been a bully, I’ve been bullied and sometimes I was just watching other people do the bullying. So being as full of myself as I usually am I’d give myself as an example of someone who grew up to be just a tad smarter and give up on all or at least most of the prejudices.
And yeah unpopular maybe isnt’ the best word. Unlucky or unfortunete would probably match a bit better
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Situations described in the comic strips reminded me of the period of time when my friend was bullied by our classmates. She has had some additional kilograms that she couldn’t lose in any way. Even when she tried so hard to lose some weight, they didn’t see
hersher effort.
She regularly heard words that hurt her feelings and left a big scar on her psyche. Now she’s working on herself, she no longer looks that fat and changed her thoughts. And the most importantly – she changed the environment that only made her think she’s the worst creature ever, that she should disappear.
I wasn’t only a witness ofthisthese situations, I was always for her. I tried very hard to fix her way of thinking, even when we were justalittle girls. Now she’s under a medical treatment. I’m still trying my best, but right now I know, that i]I cannot replace professional help. I support her and I’m very careful with judging anyone, I don’t want anyone to be judged like she was judged her whole life.
This is justaone example. I canwritemention 1000 of them. I know why discrimination exists and that this is somehow normal for human beings. But I think that everyone should work on themselves and try really hard to avoid prejudices.-
Hi Monika,
your story is very sad but unfortunately very common. Since we still don’t have many poc people making fun of ‘not skinny’ people is somehow the easiest thing to do. I agree that i kind of understand why people do that but they really should try to understand that everyone is different.
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Hi Monika!
I have similar situation with my friend. He have always used to be overweight but he was good with that until he came to Warsaw and moved to dormitory where people started laughing at him. He was very upset about that and become self – contained. -
I think bodyshaming is a very important issue while discussing topics of prejudice and discrimination. Our bodies, regardless their look, are being judged every day, not only by others but also by ourselves. Media seem to convey a clear message: One (especially women) should be fairly slim, muscular but not buff, ought to get their nails, hair and make up done, but not too much. Otherwise they’re called unnatural. Alluding to naturalness.. is desired but (as you can easily guess..) NOT TOO MUCH (for example: hairy legs and visible acne are considered gross). It is almost impossible to meet all the expectations that society burdens us with. Our everyday effort to do so is tiring and often leads to depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
Fatphobia is a very specific stigma, both social and systemic, supported by our culture and written in it. We have to be aware that telling someone who hasn’t asked for it, what he/she should do to lose on weight is improper. Saying that obesity is caused by stoking is bad.
Bodyshaming is a very broad subject and I spur everyone to get to know that topic. I highly recommend Ig and FB profile @Ciałopozytyw, where the founder of the profile posts lots of photos of bodies that do not fit the mainstream canon and writes about bodyshaming, fatphobia, sexism and many more!
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Unfortunately children usually learn how to discriminate and judge others from their families, neighbors, media and finally school. It’s inevitable as we’re attacked by stereotypes every day from every side. People are scared of the unknown and usually they’re not keen on the idea of learning about it.
Personally I don’t remember any situation where I was a victim of discrimination, but some of my family members have quite stereotypical opinions and unfortunately we tend to argue about that a lot. To be honest, I think that they represent thinking of many Poles and getting rid of these prejudices is extremely hard, taking into consideration the mentality of our country.
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I agree, I think we have a long way to go. Comparing to some other countries Poland is not very diverse, so it’s very easy for us to create negative stereotypes and very hard to unlearn them.
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As the Cambridge Dictionary says: „prejudice is unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling”. I think it is all about knowledge or the lack of it (to be exact). It seems far easier to live in the complete unawareness that life is not so simple and we cannot form unreasonable opinions because we are ignorants or we are not familiar with something. And living that way could be harmful and hurtful.
I heard a few comments when talking to my friends or family members, which I thought were prejudiced. But I tried to talk with them about it as I believe I could have a little impact on them. Internet and media are full of stereotyping and prejudicing. But it is nearly impossible to change that.
Although I try to fight it, there are moments when I use stereotypical thinking too. I always try to take a step back and think that I wouldn’t want people to see me through the prism of the stereotype. I even recall one or two times when I was a little prejudiced too, which I am not proud of.
But acting on your unfair opinion and treating people horrible because of it has no excuse. I think that we can all agree that we wouldn’t want to be discriminated due to somebody’s else prejudice.-
Hi Weronika! I really liked your methods of getting rid of stereotypical thinking, I think i do it similarly. I too fear the consequences of discimination, for example do you know what scapegoating is?
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Yes, I am familiar with the term of „scapegoating”. I believe it refers to blaming another person or group of people for something awful that has happened or that somebody else has done. People tend to do that when they want to move the responsibility for what happened from themselves and it can also serve as psychological relief. A scapegoat is a person or a group who becomes a target for blame. It could be a child, employee, ethnic/religious group or even government, corporation.
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Discrimination is a detrimental treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion and many more. It is connected to prejudice, because some people assume that they’re more privileged, important – that they’re worth more that others. It’s frightening that in this day and age some are capable of judging people by looks or behaviours that don’t hurt anyone. In my life I many times heard stories about people who create humiliating for women atmosphere in work place or even sexually harass. I have read stories of white privileged people who were nicknaming people of different colour or those suffering from mental disorders. It’s especially heartbreaking to witness how sexual minorities are treated in Poland. From my close enviornment I recall a situation where my friend was badly and heartless threated by his own mother for saying he’s a homosexual.
I think the main reason for sad situations like these mentioned above is lack of proper education in school. Not every child has the fortune of being born into open-minded family but this – I hope – could be fixed by creating a friendly atmosphere in a diversified school. Maybe it’s just a dream but I believe that we can teach children that there is nothing that puts one person above another human being.-
Hi Kamila! I found your comment really insightful and interesting. I think that I can totally agree with you. But I started wondering – what would the narrow-minded parents reaction could be like? We know that now in Poland there is this huge debate whether the school should have sex education or not. Some parents believe that school shouldn’t educate children in that area. What if the children would come home with opinions and views that their parents wouldn’t approve of? What consequences could the teacher face?
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Thanks Weronika! I thought that someone’s gonna ask me this question 🙂 About sex education – I’ve read many comments on the internet where (lets call them) “strict parents” were giving advices on how to “protect” children from this. There were simple ideas such as going to the headmaster, stopping children from participating in this kind of classes. Of course parents can decide about participation of their children in optional classes, but I think that it still would be important for sex education to take place because children who take part in these studies would talk with others afterwards. Young people are very curious and independent and when they’ll hear that something, someone can be different they will ask further questions, will try to find answers on their own, I hope.
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There are a lot of sources of prejudice, like some of you already mentioned: fear, stereotyping, the culture we grow up in, media, etc. I think a lot of it stems from lack of knowledge, we create simple, stereotypical associations from the little pieces of information we have about those we consider different from us. Sometimes people may do something offensive, without realizing it, because they don’t understand the connotations. It’s biologically conditioned in us to fear what we don’t know. Prejudice is very much related to discrimination, if we perceive someone as inferior to us without even knowing anything about them it’s so easy to discriminate against them.
I think prejudice and discrimination are present everywhere and we’re all guilty of it to some degree. The more we learn about it, the more we start to notice it all around us and within ourselves. That’s why, unfortunately, I have witnessed situations similar to those in the comics many times, because those situations are part of our daily lives. -
Dear All,
Thank you for the discussion, however, I’m not so sure you’ve read the article I asked you to. Make sure you read it when you have some free time.
Next week I’d like you to take Moral Development test. In two weeks’ time our lessons will move to MS Teams. We will come back to prejudice and stereotypes for a while then, so please do some research on the sources of prejudice I’ve listed in #7619.
I will keep you posted.Have a good day!
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I think one of the sources of prejudice is culture where we live and people who we believe as an authority. If they have a concrete opinion about something, we will follow them no matter what we think it’s good or bad. I really like the book “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen. In this story it is shown how significant is your origin to mean something in society and that your actual prejudice can be only defeated by love.
In the comic there was one photo of an elderly woman in the bus and I was very touched by this, for me a lot of elderly people are discriminated for various reasons. I also think that prejudice can lead to discrimination.-
Hi Ola, I agree with you, the culture is a big factor of prejudice. I really like the book “Pride and Prejudice” too! I think the story is a great example of how prejudice works.
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I know someone who was bullied by her classmates just because she was the best student. She didn’t brag about it, just simply had good grades and was smart. I think what children hear at home and from media is what has the biggest influence in this case. If you blend into society – you’re all fine. If you’re in some way different – now you have a problem. With this example I wanted to show that you don’t necessarily have to be of different orientation or skin color for people to treat you like there’s something wrong with you.
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Hi Ania! I’m so sorry for that girl. It is terrifying how hard it is to be a teenager. Do you think that discrimination is bigger problem among young people – like students or among adults?
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I think that in the article author mentioned really important thing – stereotypes aren’t only bad, they ‘give us broadly accurate information, even if all the details don’t line up’. For sure I don’t want to justify any bullies, any people who prejudge but thinking stereotypical is something we all do sometimes. I think we should process information from the world really consciously so even if we look at someone and we are thinking that for example that he is too fat so probably he is lazy and he only eats fast food we can quickly change our mind – first we don’t know why he is fat, and the second it is not our business.
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The prejuduces are not bad at all, but the problem is how we use them. We can see that we are wrong and try to change our behaviour, but some people might be so sure they are right, they threat other people like they are worse than them.
People can be so cruel
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I definitely agree with you, guys. Prejudices can give us a lot of information about another person, which can turn out to be important, but it also does not have to be true ( and make a lot of damage). We need to remember that and treat stereotypes like a very quiet voice in our heads.
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I agree! I think it is crucial to ask ourselves numerous questions. One should doubt and reflect upon why we think one way or another.
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I come across a lot of situations when people judge other people just by looking at them, even when they don’t seem too “weird”. Many people use unappropriate words when takling about black people or people with different sexual orientation. Thesy seem to joke about it and deny their prejuduce, but these jokes don’t come from nothing. It is really sad that people who differ from the others have to cope with these judgements made by othere people and often they have tough time for example looking for a job.
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I totally agree with one character in the comic that says “Everyone is a little bit racist”. Even when we don’t act discrimination I believe that everyone of us had at least one discriminatory though against other people. It seems impossible because sometimes we act in this way involuntary without any control. It is hard to admit but the whole comic focuses on the fact that even when we experience racism and percieve it as a world disability it is mostly common that we ourselves unconsciously discriminate others.
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I really disagree. The way some people can be offended is really personal feeling. But if you alarmed your perception of world before the second person can judge you for f.e. racism, the second person may understand that what you just say is not a racism statement – maybe is just a quote or a joke. So few people really talk in that way, this is why we Think that so many people are narrow-minded.
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G’day!
In my opinion it’s hard to enumerate a clear source of prejudice. I understand that media, advertises, fear of differency etc. are spreading the seeds of prejudice which later expands into discrimination. But the bigger problem for me is in people’s minds. The fact that people let it affect their way of thinking and justify their harmful actions. What is the problem in my opinion is that people not always see harming others as a bad thing. Because even if we have some sort of prejudice it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to discriminate others because they’re different. Being afraid is OK, thanks to that people can avoid being too open, or hurt in the process of socializing. But hurting someone and saying it’s OK just because he or she is different is not. The lack of empathy and the ease of hatred is a problem. Once people are more aware of the weight of their actions, most of prejudice – fueled actions would perish. If people would get to know others and let others get to know them, prejudice would just not be there. It would be exchanged for truth about that person. If the reality is bad for us (we don’t like it, whatever the reason), then let it be, but let it not affect how we see another – maybe a lot different inside, but similar outside – person. Because of that I think this is the main source of most prejudice. The lack of seeking truth. (I know I say it a lot, but if only folks were more into the truth and less into comfort, it would change a lot of things for better)
Prejudice is kind of a root of discrimination. It doesn’t necessarily mean that every prejudice will turn info discrimination at one point. Prejudice is what is in human’s head and discrimination is what that said human does. But of course, everyone have some prejudice at some point. But not everyone uses that prejudice to justify their discrimination.I have witnessed a lot of discrimination based on things that doesn’t even match. Like religion and intelligence, sexual preference and morality, ancestry and greediness. Basically almost all sorts and forms (if we add up what i’ve seen in movies, than erase that “almost”). From what I’ve seen, there isn’t a single characteristic that is most discriminated. All get some hatred. But recently, as I am an APS student, I’ve come to see a lot discrimination for discriminating people. It sound a bit stupid, but let me explain. The best shield against prejudice and discrimination is truth (or reasonable doubt, some may say). But not all who struggle and fight against discrimination use that asset. Some do as it is portrayed in the comic. Just discriminate the people that discriminate them. For example LGBTQ and Catholics. I’ve often have had long talks against prejudice from religious people toward people with different sexual preferrence than they have (same thing reverse – people from both groups can be as stiff-necked as a donkey). But almost as often I met people who just were justifying their hatred and discrimination against religious or LGBTQ folks because they were discriminated by them. I say that discrimination is not a powerful tool against discrimination. It only adds fuel to the fire. And it gets harder for me to talk the truth out of a person if he or she was a subject of discrimination from the group he/she discriminates.
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I feel that the source of prejudice has completely natural and unavoidable source – like the article says. We cannot avoid making assumptions, this mechanism is what keeps us safer in a very complicated an pretty dangerous world. We need schemas for people – we identify them as part of bigger group. And we have certain stereotypes (be it good or bad) about that group.
Not only that – everyone also identifies as a member of some group (we are all students, we are polish, we have certain gender) and also has an image of that group in their minds. We stereotype ourselves.
The stereotype about a group can sometimes be hardly distinguishable from real knowledge about that group. And we need knowledge, our natural tendency is to accumulate knowledge that’s relevant to our lifes.I encountered many situations like those in comics. People who were treated badly often react with anger and it is likely to be directed into a group rather than a certain person. I feel like it is especially the case in the internet where we do not see faces, real identities but we recognise an argument and we think this argument “belongs” to a group. And then we may just think “oh this *name of the group* talk stupid again.
Also it is easier to remember bad things about the group that is different to ours, that we may disagree with or find weird.-
I think you’re right, making assumptions is sort of defense mechanism for us. Also feeling of belonging to the group is quite important for us and maybe that’s why we also categorize other people.
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I’m really sorry for the delay. I had some problems with my internet and couldn’t upload any comment here.
As my classmates wrote above, prejudice is innate. We can always try to avoid it, but personally I don’t know a single person who isn’t sometimes prejudiced. I think there are no exact sources, maybe it is partly cultural based or as I wrote before just inborn. Referring to the article, I think it’s really common to judge book by its cover. Most of people, especially while watching tv shows, make easy assumptions based on looks. When we see person which is not really good looking, we automaticlly think that this person could’t be talented and wouldn’t become a star. It’s very wrong but really common. We simply follow stereotypes. This article reminded me of dating app called “Tinder”, there you judge people based on their looks and not at all on who they really are and for me it is a bit scary, this objectification. We decide to talk or not with someone, is this person is interesting for us, mainly based on his/her appearance. That’s wrong, but at the same time I think there’s not much we can do about it. We can always try to live without prejudice, but is it really possible to get rid of all of it? I don’t think so. Sadly, I think that Poles as a nation are very judgemental, intolerant, prejudiced and guided by stereotypes. Maybe through the years situation is getting better, but still this is a huge problem in our country. Many of the examples showed in a comic book, that we were suppoused to read, we can apply to our nation. Many times I experienced myself this judgment and intolerance, especially as a person who has been wearing glasses since early childhood, because of this I was repeatedly excluded by my peers. Kids can be really brutal, but I think that this have its source in their parents behavior or other people that are in their surronding. Also some of my friends when I told them that I’m going to study special education said “You’re really brave that you decided to work with those idiots”. This kind of behaviour, in my opinion, comes from ignorance. We are afraid of what we don’t know and hatred is a kind of weapon against the unknown.
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