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The impact of prejudice and discrimination
The effect of prejudice
The impact of prejudice and discrimination
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People can be very prejudice. They may even discriminate against you for the color of your skin or maybe even where you’re from. This is why I believe people have a tendency to allow their prejudices to direct their decisions. Which is also shown in the play Twelve Angry Men.
Being prejudice means that you form an opinion before becoming aware of the actual facts. People are often preconceived of a person because of gender, class, age, religion, race, language, and even nationality. One major example of someone redirecting their decisions because of a person’s race is when a police officer pulls a suspect over. The officer may be more biased towards the suspect depending on the person’s ethnicity or maybe even their gender. Another example
of this is in airports, when certain religions or nationalities go in they may be more likely to get “randomly searched”. Those are just a few reasons why I believe people have a tendency to allow their prejudices to direct their decisions. Although rgis is sad it is also very true, and it is still going on in the world today.
There are many stereotypes out there that cause certain people to think a specific way about different people. If someone has a different skin color, they may have a stereotype
Warriors don’t cry is a story of the Little Rock Nine who went to Central High School; an all-white school with hopes to integrate blacks and whites into non segregated schools. The story mainly follows a girl named Melba and what her life was like at the time of going to this school and making a stepping stone into desegregation. However this took place in a time and place where white people were still being very racist towards black people. Some say sending a girl into a school like this is child abuse because these kids suffered death threats, being physically abused, and slandered against. There is also the people that believe this was the right thing to do even if a child like Melba’s life was at risk. It was not child abuse to send Melba
“No matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the trues” (page 66). Prejudice can be a dangerous thing, especially when it comes to adjusting somebody’s life. At that time in America a jury consists of twelve men can determine the life or death of one person by giving a unanimous verdict. A typical reflection of this reality is an influential drama “Twelve Anger Men”. Reginald Rose wrote this drama inspired by his experience of being a juror on a manslaughter case to reveal a common social phenomenon of prejudice. To stress the main idea that, Rose presents the key points that biased individuals are less rational or blinding themselves with an unfair judgement about one’s guilt. Moreover, she conveys the facts that stereotype produces an effect on one’s statement. Furthermore, prejudice constantly affect other jurors’ opinion, intentionally or unintentionally. With Rose’s vivid description and clear contrast between each juror, he emphasizes the existence of prejudice and further to spread an idea that prejudice influence the outcome of the trial.
Twelve angry men is a play about twelve jurors who have to decide if the defendant is guilty of murdering his father, the play consist of many themes including prejudice, intolerance, justice , and courage. The play begins with a judge explaining to the jurors their job and how in order for the boy to be sent to death the vote must be unanimous. The jurors are then locked into a small room on a hot summer day. At first, it seems as though the verdict is obvious until juror eight decides to vote not guilty. From that moment on, the characters begin to show their true colors. Some of the characters appear to be biased and prejudice while others just want justice and the truth. Twelve Angry Men Despite many of the negative qualities we see
In the book West Side Story by Arthur Laurents there were many prejudices. Prejudice is a favoring or dislike of something without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge. There were prejudices in West Side Story that had to do with the types of people, their races and sex. Sometimes prejudice can be in small doses and can be meaningless, other times prejudice can be very serious and cause death.
In the play Twelve Angry men the theme of Bias is very strong. The vote is 11 to 1 in a murder trial of a 16-year-old boy charged with stabbing and killing his father. Without any discussion eleven jurors presumed the defendant is guilty. Did the defendant’s racial bias, class bias, confirmation bias, play a role in their decision?
Prejudice meaning pre-judging someone and having an unwarranted bias occurs often in today’s society and has been around since the beginning of time. Prejudice can effect people’s decisions and have an unfair impact on society. The text ‘To kill a mocking-bird’ written by Harper Lee and the movie ‘Philadelphia’ directed by Jonathon Demme explore this idea thoroughly.
Comparing the 1960’s to the world we live in today, people who are “different” in society are treated poorly. There are many ways over the years people who are divergent have been acted towards. From wide ranging of racial, religious, and sexual to minimizing as simply wearing the same clothes for 2 days. The book The Curious Case of Benjamin Button takes place in a summer of 1960 Baltimore. Roger Button and his wife were a very rich couple who owned a Hardware Company. Henceforth, having a 70-year old baby was not a word you wanted out. People who are wealthy and well-known always have a reputation to uphold. In this 1960’s scenario it would be “Whose son went to the best university” or “Whose son scored more points in the football game”.
12 Angry Men is a famous play and movie that was written by award-winning Reginald Rose. 12 Angry Men is a play in which the 12 members of a jury argue if a boy is innocent or guilty in a tight room, where some arguments become heated and aggressive. The author goes over several moral principles throughout the play. One of the main principles that Reginald Rose implements into his play, is that racial segregation and racism can cloud people’s views, even when deciding important matters. Racism shouldn’t cloud our judgement when deciding on what is right and wrong.
In viewing 12 Angry Men, we see face to face exactly what man really is capable of being. We see different views, different opinions of men such as altruism, egoism, good and evil. It is no doubt that human beings possess either one or any of these characteristics, which make them unique. It is safe to say that our actions, beliefs, and choices separate us from animals and non-livings. The 20th century English philosopher, Martin Hollis, once said, “Free will – the ability to make decisions about how to act – is what distinguishes people from non-human animals and machines 1”. He went to describe human beings as “self conscious, rational, creative. We can fall in love, write sonnets or plan for tomorrow. We are capable of faith, hope and charity, and for that matter, of envy, hated and malice. We know truth from error, right from wrong 2.” Human nature by definition is “Characteristics or qualities that make human beings different from anything else”. With this said, the topic of human nature has been around for a very long time, it is a complex subject with no right or wrong answer. An American rabbi, Samuel Umen, gave examples of contradictions of human nature in his book, Images of Man. “He is compassionate, generous, loving and forgiving, but also cruel, vengeful, selfish and vindictive 3”. Existentialism by definition is, “The belief that existence comes before essence, that is, that who you are is only determined by you yourself, and not merely an accident of birth”. A French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, is the most famous and influential 20th - century existentialist. He summed up human nature as “existence precedes essence”. In his book, Existentialism and Human Emotions, he explained what he meant by this. “It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will be something, and he himself will have made what he will be 4”. After watching 12 Angry Men, the prominent view on human nature that is best portrayed in the movie is that people are free to be whatever they want because as Sartre said, “people create themselves every moment of everyday according to the choices they make 5”.
A prejudice is an opinion based on no actual reason or experience. Prejudice can be seen almost everyday and cannot be eliminated. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the author expresses acts of prejudice throughout the book. In the novel, children are shown making prejudice because their minds are much more imaginative and they have a different way of precepting things.
There are some very magnificent things in the world. There also many horrible things. Prejudice can easily be classified as something terrible and awful. Prejudice is found just about everywhere in the world. There is prejudice against colored people, religions, overweight people and many others as well. But how does one form such perspective of prejudice towards others? A person's experiences can change their perspective on prejudice as well as how they view the world and everybody else around them.
Guilty or not guilty, all citizens deserve a thorough trial to defend their rights. Formulating coherent stories about events and circumstances almost cost a young boy his life. In Twelve Angry Men, 1957, a single juror named Mr. Davis, who was initially the only one of 12 jurors to vote not guilty against an 18 year old boy accused of first degree murder, did his duty to save the life of the boy by allowing his mind to rationalize the cohesive information presented by the court and its witnesses. Mr. Davis, juror #8, convinced the other jurors’ that there was room for reasonable doubt that the boy could have killed his father by pointing out key factors of misguidance through intuitive predictions. Without rational thinking, is it safe to
Prejudice can be caused because of various reasons. Religion, ethnic race and social status are examples of causes of prejudice. Sometimes prejudice is caused by how we are raised. Many times parents pass on prejudice beliefs to their children. A lot people raised in the southern part of the country are prejudice against blacks. In the early to mid 1960’s, prejudice was alive and well in the south. Blacks had their own bathrooms and were forced to ride in the back of city busses. It’s hard to believe that was doing on only 40 years ago. A lot of Middle Eastern countries are very prejudice against women.
Discrimination is an important issue that still exists in today 's world. There has always been discrimination amongst the different cultures in the United States. For instance, the segregation and slavery of African-Americans were a long-existing discrimination which caused African-Americans to be hated and treated as animals. This correlates to the movie 12 Angry Men which shows prejudice of a eighteen-year-old Hispanic boy. The boy is being held on trial after he is presumed about murdering his father with a knife. The majority of the jurors vote guilty basing it off their personal views, but there is one who votes him not guilty. This shows that racial profiling is a key factor used in making this decision. Racial profiling should not