Pride and prejudice

Biases, partiality, prejudices, all are words that seem to have a negative conotation associated with them; but let's once again delve a little deeper and see if we can come up with something different. Aha! I just did. Being biased, prejudiced or partial is not a bad thing in and of itself. We all come with inclinations, where we feel strongly about certain issues. Whether they be as serious as race, religion, political ideology or as flippant and casual as coffees, clothes or cigarettes. Let's face the reality and accept that we have such serious and perfunctory leanings. We all have at one time or another stereotyped the followers of a particular race or religion, some people may say that is stereotyping but who are we kidding here? That is still a prejudice, and one wouldn't be saying so if one didn't feel that the other party was inferior and hence a prejudice.

Now it is not wrong that we have certain dispositions, it seems only natural that in the variety of life we like only so many of the flavours we come across. The idea here is not to deny a certain flavour the respect just because one feels they are superior. Take for instance, a person who is a raging racist and hates caucasians. Him hating caucasians is not as bad when for example he starts to make decisions based on his prejudice. That I feel is worse. Too many people nowadays spend time correcting others' faults when they should be trying to address the real problem and that is that such people act upon such ideas. I have much respect for a racist who speaks his mind but when the time comes he does not base any decision based on such a subjective idea.

Here is a real life example I heard from a friend of my father. Their corporation happened to be hiring at that time and he was on a panel of three recruiters (can't remember the exact number but there was more than one). On that panel was one person who had a dislike for Mexicans and people of that origin. Once the panel was through with the interview process, my father's friend felt that the Mexican was the best candidate for the job, and knowing well that a fellow panel member disliked Mexicans, he decided to voice his opinion and speak his mind. Here is the shocker, despite his dislike, our racist panelist, felt the same way and decided to go with the Mexican chap.

This account shows what I am trying to get at. Rather than to tell people "Hey you should not be so prejudiced," like some saint, we ought to remind people that their prejudice ought not to get in the way of justice being done. In this little case, justice was done and rightly so. The right man was hired for the job.