Social prejudice

“ This prejudice is based on the ground that bad economic conditions and an unwholesome environment are the source of all social evils, and that a better distribution of wealth, or a vast scheme of social welfare, is the one thing necessary, when that is achieved all other things being added unto us, without any further trouble on our part. ”

“ Almost every bearing of the menace on family and social life is brought out in a way well calculated to meet prejudice due to indifference, ignorance or tradition, and to create a conviction that here is a scourge to be conquered by publicity. ”

“ These prejudices are, of course, more common among the uneducated poor than in the upper classes, who in various relations come more often in contact with Monkeys, and who also have a wider and more tolerant, because a better cultivated, spirit. But the prejudice is discernible in every class of society, even in the very highest. ”

“ They were so strongly fixed in their pride and prejudices against social equality that they pursued their own gentle, even way, untouched by the convulsions and throes of fierce indignation around them. ”

“ You cannot, my dear Oqua, educated as you were in the most advanced thought of this altruistic civilization, realize the almost irresistible power of prejudices when they have been incorporated into the education of a people for thousands of years. They constitute a race belief, the correctness of which the people seldom, if ever, heard questioned. When I assumed male attire and associated myself with men in the ranks of labor, I knew that I invited not only social ostracism, but laid myself liable to arrest and imprisonment, if my disguise was discovered. ”

“ First, that in all cases where such marked distinctions, and deeply rooted jealousies exist between the different sections of society, the open slanders and covert insinuations of the one against the other, should be received with the most liberal allowances for prejudice. ”

“ What though the heart be purer than the snow which covers the mountain tops, can they ever claim a position among the favorites of fortune, when accompanied by beggary? Philanthropists, and philosophers tell us they can, but the demon, Prejudice, has erected a banner, which can never be pulled down, until man resumes the patriarchal life of centuries ago, and society, the mockery by which we claim civilization was built up, is removed from the earth, and mankind can mingle with each other in free and unrestricted intercourse. ”

“ Only the workers in the darkest places of our great cities know how large illegitimacy looms as a factor in the social disintegration that leads to the prison, to the mad-house, to the hospitals, to the casual wards, and to the streets. Only the eye of the scientist can vision in the relation of the unhonored child to its mother the seed of that evil which one day shall become the dishonor of the dishonorable man. ”

“ Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. ”

“ Indeed, there is such a thing as a prejudice against them, arising from their very state of poverty, which ought greatly to be guarded against: a kind of prejudice, to which perhaps most of us, upon some occasions, and in some degree, may inattentively be liable, but which pride and interest may easily work up to a settled hatred of them ”

“ But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came borne upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half-men? ”

“ Where there is no frame-work of respectability founded on the esprit de corps and on public opinion cemented into a prejudice, the jarring pretensions of individuals fall into a chaos of elementary particles, neutralising each other by mutual antipathy, and soon become the sport and laughter of the multitude. Where the whole is referred to intrinsic, real merit, this creates a standard of conceit, egotism, and envy in every one’s own mind, lowering the class, not raising the individual. ”

“ For a man who, seeing the want and misery, the ignorance and brutishness caused by unjust social institutions, sets himself to right them in so far as he has strength, there is disappointment and bitterness. ”

“ Is the longing of the shield.
62 How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike; how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners, customs, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ from us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from prejudice, and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized society. ”

“ I find that these people, alone in their struggles of doubt and of prejudice, are surrounded by a public opinion powerful to create and powerful to destroy; I find them poor in culture and poor in worldly substance, and dependent for the bread they eat upon those they antagonize politically. ”

“ He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and their non-receptivity to ideas. ”

“ So in the economy of society; if there be any who suffer physical privation or [29] moral degradation, whose bodily necessities are either not satisfied or satisfied in a manner which only brutish creatures can be content with, this, though not necessarily the crime of society, is pro tanto a failure of the social arrangements. And to assert as a mitigation of the evil that those who thus suffer are the weaker members of the community, morally or physically, is to add insult to misfortune. Is weakness a justification of suffering? ”

“ Until we do this, we shall not be able to talk away, or to argue away, this prejudice. We cannot talk our way into our rights; we must work our way, think our way, into them. And you will find that just in proportion as we do this, we are going to get all we deserve. ”

“ Sometimes their reason—at other times their prejudices or superstitions: often their social affections, not seldom their anti-social ones, their envy or jealousy, their arrogance or contemptuousness: but most commonly, their desires or fears for themselves—their legitimate or illegitimate self-interest. Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large portion of the morality of the country emanates from its class interests, and its feelings of class superiority. ”

“ The derangements and miseries of mankind are precisely due to the ignorant and arrogant rule of “superior” classes and persons. The mental and spiritual capacity of these classes is a myth; their so-called culture but thinly veneers their essential savagery, their social rapacity and impudence....
The system that divides society into classes can bring forth no true knowledge, no living truth, no industrial competence, no fundamental social decency. ”

“ I saw a man whose eyes had gone behind every scene, whose back had turned, he believed, on every illusion, tolerant of every frailty, amused at little hypocrisies and of those greater shams which an arrogant society imposes on the outsider and itself defies with impunity: steeped in this class cynicism, without realizing that in the strong nourishing forces of civilization this society is but the scum that rises to the surface and that in the old pot-au-feu below are the vital nourishments of the race. ”

“ Wounds past curing will have been fostered and aggravated, an all pervading jealousy being the first. Then the upper classes will be submerged; equality of desire will be taken for equality of strength; true distinction, even when proved and recognized, will be threatened by the advancing tide of middle-class prejudice. It was possible to choose one man out of a thousand, but, amongst three millions, discrimination becomes impossible, when all are moved by the same ambitions and attired in the same livery of mediocrity. ”

“ After some commonplace and laborious replies, exchanged apropos of trivial topics then current, the conversation gradually became general, and finally settled down upon the subject of correctness in society life.
All these poor devils, all these poor wretches, male and female, forgetting their own social irregularities, showed a strangely implacable severity toward persons whom it was allowable to suspect, not even of stains or blemishes, but simply of some formal lack of respect for society laws,—the only ones that ought to be obeyed. ”

“ Our duties, then, are obvious—If selfish and violent passions have been generated by the inequalities of society, we must labour to counteract them, by endeavouring to combat prejudice, to expand the mind, to give comprehensive views, to teach mankind their true interest, and to lead them to habits of goodness and greatness. Every prejudice conquered, every mistake rectified, every individual improved, is an advance upon the great scale of virtue and happiness. ”

“ The intelligent and well informed have the least share of this prejudice; and when their minds can be brought to reflect upon it, I have generally observed that they soon cease to have any at all. But such a general apathy prevails and the subject is so seldom brought into view, that few are really aware how oppressively the influence of society is made to bear upon this injured class of the community. ”

“ It keeps the moral standard of the patriarchal era still before us, and blinds our eyes to the full duty of man.
The Wrongfulness of Riches By Grant Allen
(English essayist and nature student, 1848-1899)
If you are on the side of the spoilers, then you are a bad man. If you are on the side of social justice, then you are a good one. There is no effective test of high morality at the present day save this. ”

“ The prudish and hypocritical attitude of society is universally regarded as the main cause of all-pervading diffusion of the social evil, furthered by a most flagrant ignorance on one hand and a morbid curiosity produced by this attitude on the other. ”

“ The Prejudice which the Publick sustains from a wrong Education of Children, is an Evil of the same Nature, as it in a manner starves Posterity, and defrauds our Country of those Persons who, with due Care, might make an eminent Figure in their respective Posts of Life. ”

“ And here is a case in point, in which we should know how to rise above prejudice—the vulgar prejudice of the insipid and intellectually indolent society of our day, in which it is considered the proper thing for a man of culture to read each worthless production that happens to have a run. ”

“ I know—it’s very dreadful, but then,’—and here she blushed one of her pretty apologetic little blushes—‘you know I’m used to it. People in business always are. They expect to be treated just like servant—now THAT, I know you’ll say, is itself a piece of hubris, the expression of a horrid class prejudice. ”

“ This passive instinct he called "prejudice"—the unreasoning and unquestioning attachment to the family and "the little platoon we belong to in society," from which our affection, coincident always with a feeling of contented obligation, is gradually enlarged to take in the peculiar institutions of our country; "prejudice renders a man's virtues his habits, ... through just prejudice his duty becomes a part of his nature." ”

“ And under this comprehensive formula he proceeded to study and attack Family Prejudice, National Prejudice, Race Prejudice, War, Class Prejudice, Professional Prejudice, Sex Prejudice, in the most industrious and elaborate manner. Whether one regards one's self or others he held that these prejudices are evil things. ”

“ If such a prejudice could shew itself also, and exert its influence in the sight of the world, and in the face of so many opposing considerations, how much more must it not be expected to operate, when there is no bystander to witness its acts, and when indolence, self-interest, habit, example, and various other motives, conspire to give effect to it? ”

“ In fact, will not every thing conduct to indulgence the fatalist whom experience has convinced of the necessity of things? Will he not see with pain, that it is the essence of a society badly constituted, unwisely governed, enslaved to prejudice, attached to unreasonable customs, submitted to irrational laws, degraded under despotism, corrupted by luxury, inebriated by false opinions, to be filled with trifling members; to be composed of vicious citizens ”

“ By that inevitable law of action and reaction which prevails alike in moral and social as in physical phenomena, the community which has so large a portion of its members in a condition of ignorance and brutality, must, throughout its whole body, partake of the degradation which exists within it, and must be affected, by the very contact, in all its feelings, sentiments, and purposes, through the gross and ignorant passions which such an association cannot fail to arouse. ”

“ That is the question into the answer of which so much prejudice enters that it is hardly worth while to reason about it. My opinion is that as the colored man gets land, becomes chaste, frugal, temperate, industrious, veracious, that he will gradually acquire respect, and will attain political equality. ”

“ True, this outside work is well, and must be done; let those who see no other do this, but let them lay no hindrances in the way of that class of mind, who, seeing in our present false social relations the causes of the moral deformities of the race, would fain declare the immutable laws that govern mind as well as matter, and point out the true causes of the evils we see about us, whether lurking under the shadow of the altar, the sacredness of the marriage institution, or the assumed superiority of man. ”