"prejudice is a disease we can never get rid of." Discuss.

The classic definition of prejudice is the one put forth by the famous Harvard psychologist, Gordon Allport, who published The Nature of Prejudice in 1954: "Prejudice is an antipathy based on faulty and inflexible generalization. It may be felt or expressed. It may be directed toward a group or an individual of that group". Prejudice has existed in our human civilization for many years. It’s just like a cancerous growth which destroys human race from the inside unknowingly. This disease is extremely harmful. It could lead to genocides. The extermination of six million Jews by Nazis during WW2 and the “Rape of Nanking” where the Japanese killed about 300 000 Chinese people are some consequences caused by prejudice. Prejudice is also a contagious disease as it could be passed from person to person and could also be inherited through generations. This deadly disease could be minimized but it is impossible to cure it completely.

The existence of prejudice in our human society is often due to adults who plant this seed of unreasonable hatred towards certain people in their children. Parents, probably due to their beliefs, tend to discriminate against certain people. They are likely to influence their children to do the same. Hence, they are growing a generation of people who hate and suspicious about each other for no reason at all. Thus to minimize this prejudice in our human society, we should start from educating parents and children so that they could accept others as what they are and there should not be any discrimination among people.

It is true that we can minimize prejudice, but it is impossible to completely eradicate it. The root of prejudice comes from the simple fact that everyone is created differently. This uniqueness causes one to be suspicious and prejudiced against certain people who are not like himself in significant ways. That is human nature of self-centeredness. Therefore, to have a world without prejudice is impossible unless everyone is created the same in every way, like genes, ideology, beliefs etc, which is impossible.

In conclusion, prejudice is a disease we can never get rid of. That is a miserable fact of life, but we should try to accept it. And we should also, through every possible way, minimize it. It is impossible to make this world the best place, but it is possible to make the world a better place to live in.