You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled realization that our existing system has many faults. In doing so, it has opened an opportunity for change. The white patriarchal neoliberal hegemony that “normalizes” racism, misogyny, and other forms of prejudice and discrimination is being challenged by those who do not feel represented or protected by the system.
We are a culturally diverse society, and in order to become inclusive, we have to challenge prejudice and encourage articulation of alternative world views and cultural norms. Prejudice represents the unconscious part of the ideology of a society. It justifies discriminatory measures and the exploitation of one group by another.
From a psychoanalytic perspective, discrimination and hate toward “The Other” are universal characteristics of societies. They stem from the impossibility of constructing oneself without excluding and devaluing the other.
Our view of the world, including our prejudice, comes with mother's milk. We are born into a set of prejudices that encompasses from ideology to table manners.
Philologically, the term prejudice alludes to a judgment that precedes experience and corresponds to Kant's (1781) a priori. Prejudice organizes and discriminates the events and facts we must assess in order to understand our surrounding world. It brings together the beliefs, values, and frame of reference of each subject's world.
Prior to individual judgment, prejudice places beliefs and convictions within a set of values that are accepted or rejected by one's particular cultural and social milieu, such as one's family. For that reason, prejudice is indispensable for thinking and helps protect self-definition and self-boundaries. Prejudices are also consciously and unconsciously transmitted from one generation to the next. Blanck-Cereijido (2014), El Siglo del Prejuicio Confrontado.
Pointing to others' inferiority is the flip side of asserting one's own truth. Freud maintains that people use small di