Purposeful Ramblings Through My Mind

Something like. However, we really need to stop referring to this sort of prejudice as stupidity. It both tends to make us see those who hold the prejudice as below us, inferior, and, perhaps, beyond hope. The other problem is that by seeing such codes "stupid", we under rate their power. Part of what makes prejudice hard to combat is its fearsome cognitive efficiency. Prejudice and over generalization are very fast in terms of processing in categorization and classification problems. Wrong and injurious to the people holding prejudice, but fast nonetheless. We tend to interpret this speed as certainty and certainty comforts. The other issue with prejudice is that it's very bound up with rules and social norms. Again, we tend to underestimate the role and power of social(group) norms. They're essential to how a group stays together and functions. In fact, an author I'm reading right now refers to norms as "the grammar of society". Overthrowing both norms and prejudice requires a complete upending of the individual's internal world model and his or her entire way of assembling messages out of information conveyed through social channels.