Stereotyping and Prejudice

World Religions teach people to respect others, their culture and their beliefs, however we still see discrimination. In my opinion, this is because not all religions teach to respect others outside of the said religion. What we don’t know or understand we tend to judge. For example, when we see someone wearing a Chador we immediately jump to the conclusion that what there wearing is weird or stupid when we may not actually know the meaning behind what they are wearing or why they are wearing it. Although we are taught to respect others sometimes we don’t understand the choices of people in different cultures, so we tend to discriminate others for this reason. Every day people are exposed to some sort of discrimination or prejudice. Whether they experience it personally or watch someone else be affected by it. Prejudice and discrimination can undermine a person’s self-esteem and self-confidence and make them feel terrible, unaccepted and unworthy. When this happens in children their school performance often suffers, they may become depressed, socially withdrawn and unhappy. The same thing occurs in adolescence and adults and they may become more self-conscience of how they look or act because of what other people are saying. When people are put down or are discriminated against they start to believe what people are saying about them and this lowers their self worth. They then start to put themselves down and take the abuse from other people because their head is filled with negative thoughts about themselves and their confidence is low. It is important to disregard what other people have to say about you because if they don’t know you how do they really know what they are judging? Prejudice and stereotyping is present in my life in many ways. We see stereotyping and prejudice in our everyday lives, for example when it is assumed that someone who is Asian is smart, using the “N” word towards colored people, someone’s sexual orientation, the way someone speaks,