Try Online Counseling: Get Personally Matched<\/a><\/p>\nIn addition to these two groups which seem to dominate the news, the politics, and the national conversation \u2014 that is, in addition to the unapologetically prejudiced and anti-prejudiced, plus those fearful of their own prejudices \u2014 I think there is another group. This is the set of people who accept without resentment that the world is the way it is, but who work actively to improve it, all while acknowledging that nobody, including themselves, has perfect inner egalitarianism toward the outside world. These people do not shy away from that lack of inner egalitarianism, but they do work to be aware of it, to understand it, to mitigate its effects. These people are more apt to reflect on their inner prejudices than to fear them, more apt to devote themselves to changing them from the inside than to work to ensure nobody suspects them of harbouring them in the first place. They are not blind to the structural unfairness in society that has grown out of unfettered prejudice, but they also believe in the power that overcoming prejudice at the level of the individual has on eliminating that unfairness. Unsurprisingly, this set of people is largely unheard amongst the hubbub and back-and-forth of the two noisy groups I\u2019ve described above. I\u2019ve often wondered how many of them there might be; is it a large proportion of the population, a majority even, or is it just a small slice? I suspect that many in the more outspoken groups would maintain that such people are simply confused, deluded, or living in pollyannaish denial.<\/p>\n
To be clear, I think there\u2019s nothing wrong with being afraid of our own prejudices. But what really matters in terms of our impact on the world around us is how we behave when we experience that feeling. Do we put our energy into maintaining a fa\u00e7ade to protect ourselves from having those prejudices discovered? Do we protect ourselves by chalking it all up to an accident of birth? Or do we focus on the feeling itself and work to understand it better? Generally speaking, when we respond to fear by trying to protect ourselves, those factors within us which go into the fear tend to remain stuck in place, ensuring that change is slow or non-existent. By contrast, when we accept the fear, sit down alongside it, and listen to it, we can drain away some of its energy, and we can ultimately work to transform it and perhaps rid ourselves of it altogether. That, in turn, opens the way to teasing out and examining with a clear head our assumptions and inferences and outright prejudices, increasing our self-awareness and, at least some of the time, correcting our faulty thinking. It also means we can more easily listen to and understand what other people are saying about their own lives, including about the impact of prejudice and discrimination on them.<\/p>\n