The word prej­u­dice is defined as a pre­con­ceived opin­ion that is not based on rea­son or actual expe­ri­ence that entails dis­like, hos­til­ity or unjust behav­ior formed on such a basis.

When prej­u­dice is applied to peo­ple, the word is defined as an irra­tional atti­tude of hos­til­ity directed against an indi­vid­ual, a group, a race or their sup­posed char­ac­ter­is­tics. If you took the time to redi­rect your eyes to my head­shot for a moment, you would notice that I have red hair.

I have per­son­ally been sub­jected to prej­u­dice all of my life. Some instances of prej­u­dice have been truly nasty, while oth­ers were meant in jest. Recently I have had to come to terms with peo­ple who jok­ingly say­ing I don’t have a soul or I’m a heart­less human being who will not be missed when extinct–not because I’m actu­ally heart­less or lack­ing a soul.

When I was younger, I only had to deal with jokes about the color of my crotch or how badly sun­burned I get.

For the most part, I’ve learned to cope with and han­dle it, although I don’t think any­one should ever have to deal with this kind of treatment.

It’s dis­gust­ing that we allow our­selves to be caught up on minor dif­fer­ences so much so that we find it nec­es­sary to oppress the peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent with­out even know­ing these people.

This sort of prej­u­dice against peo­ple due to their char­ac­ter­is­tics is the same rea­son why four African-Americans were shot in Tulsa over Easter week­end. Three of these peo­ple died sim­ply because of their skin color. A 13-year-old boy in Kansas was doused in gaso­line and lit on fire in March by two teenagers for being white.

Prejudice is the same rea­son why Michael Sandy died in 2006. Sandy was chased into traf­fic by four attack­ers who were attempt­ing to rob him because he was gay.

This same prej­u­dice is the rea­son why there’s a mock hol­i­day that is all about kick­ing “gin­gers.” If you Google this event, a list of sev­eral arti­cles exclaim­ing gin­ger chil­dren being beaten will come to horizon.

Without South Park’s ren­di­tion of the word “gin­ger,” I wouldn’t be able to thank the cre­ators of the tele­vi­sion series for being auto­mat­i­cally summed up as a soul­less, grotesque genetic muta­tion to the rest of humanity.

We should be embrac­ing our dif­fer­ences rather than expend­ing large amounts of energy to be against one another. We shouldn’t be beat­ing each other down sim­ply for our dif­fer­ences when it is our dif­fer­ences that make the human species unique.

As a species that relies on genetic vari­a­tion to con­tinue, we are doing a stu­pen­dous job at destroy­ing vari­a­tion and each other through the per­pet­u­a­tion of racism and prejudice.

I don’t under­stand what is so dif­fi­cult about end­ing racism and prej­u­dice, when all we need to do is stop and think. I guess think­ing is too much to ask of any one anymore.

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1. Pride & Prejudice
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