Prejudice
Column by Navid Modiri, 19 years old.
Prejudice. Passing judgment on a suspect before he or she is found guilty. Making a judgment before an investigation is carried out. Hanging a person before a crime has been committed.
If I see a blond on the street, I might think like this:
There goes a blond, she has blond hair, she’s wearing platform shoes and tight trousers, she’s probably ditzy, she’s probably a tramp who’ll sleep with anybody, she’s wearing make-up, she wants to compensate for being dumb, she is stupid, she is blond, she is stupid, of course she is, all blonds are stupid, blonds are ditzy, blonds are ditzy. All those thoughts race through my head in a few seconds and that’s how long it takes for me to decide what I should think about a person. A person I've never spoken to and who I don’t know in any other way. Based on her appearance alone, I can decide that she’s a stupid tramp.
If the blond sees me on the street, she may think something like this: There goes a foreigner, he has black hair, he has a beard, he isn’t Swedish, he probably can’t even speak Swedish, he’s probably Muslim, he’s most likely a Taliban, he probably gets in fights all the time, he hits his girlfriend, his friends, his little brother, he’s even wearing black shoes, everything about him is black, he’s going to steal my mobile phone, he’s a dark-haired foreigner and he steals mobile phones.
It probably doesn’t take her very long to think all that either. Of course, she hasn’t talked to me or tried to get to know me. Based on the colour of my hair alone, she decided that she should probably take another route to avoid me so that I can’t steal her mobile phone. Prejudice. Judgments passed on people by other people before any investigation is carried out.
There are tons of prejudices about all kinds of people: blonds, dark-haired foreigners, gypsies, lorry drivers, reporters, computer geeks, sports fans, rock musicians – the list could go on forever. The common denominator is that they are almost always wrong. Prejudice falls flat under its own weight. But since the dark-haired foreigner and the blond have already made up their minds, because they are too busy deciding in advance what kind of person the other one is, they don’t have time to get to know people.
Prejudice – a picture of how the other person probably appears and behaves, a picture that is usually extremely exaggerated, with all the possible negatives blown out of proportion – has clogged up the system. You don’t want to get to know a person anymore. You already know what he or she is like: thieving, slutty, dumb, can’t even speak Swedish. If you look closer at the picture, you find other explanations: The blond has just started studying at the Stockholm School of Economics with the aim of becoming a stockbroker. She’s always made good grades in school and she has had the same boyfriend for almost three years. Our friend the black-haired foreigner also has his good points. He was just admitted to Chalmers, where he is going to get a degree in engineering. When he graduates, he’ll be able to afford to buy ten mobile phones a month if he wants to, and he certainly has no need to steal.
It’s easy to moralize and tell other people what to do. I have a lot of prejudices myself. But there is a difference between being aware of your own prejudices and going around wondering all the time why you’re afraid to get to know other people, why you have a hard time getting close to other people. It is simply because you don’t give people a chance to show their real selves. Loosen the noose around the neck of the person you’ve condemned. See what’s hidden under the prison uniform you’ve imagined. It’s pretty unlikely you’ll find a murderer. And you just might find a friend.