Six: Who We Are

I want to float a conjecture here about prejudice. We are all prejudiced. Me. You. Everyone. To varying degrees. Contrary to the platitude that no one is born prejudiced, suspicion of outsiders, may have had collective survival value for human beings through the distant past, when an encroachment of one group upon the territory of another could have far-reaching and deadly consequences. The problem with prejudice, with suspicion of outsiders, is that as societies become bigger, more urbanized, more multicultural, it no longer has survival value, and becomes a social liability. It’s also admittedly true that as a scholar, someone devoted to scientific study, I think questioning, challenging, overturning beliefs one holds that are hasty, irrational, or not based in fact is a valuable thing independently of its social value. But instead of thinking about prejudice as something people learn, how does it change the story if we think of prejudice, suspicion of people who are different from us, as partly an outgrowth of human beings as social critters, something that we must learn to imperfectly confront, examine, discard?