Prejudice is simple. It means, "pre-judging". For instance this is a case of prejudice, the cop judged the situation without full facts.

Our society (at least the PC parts of it) has given prejudice an extremely ugly label. There are good reasons for this, but it unfortunately obscures any attempt at honest discussion.

Prejudice is frequently ugly. I don't think I need to expand on that truism.

Prejudice is also necessary. The fact is that real people in the real world have to make a lot of judgements. We seldom have complete information. Frequently the cost of getting complete information is honestly not worth the effort of obtaining it. You don't have time to do a complete rundown on every person approaching you on the street. You can be held up quite effectively by a petite female with a gun. (Don't get on Slugbug's bad side!) A huge black bum might have a heart of gold. But if one tries to stop you on the street and ask a question of you, you would be an idiot to react the same way.

However if everyone in society reacts the same way, this leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. Blacks are distrusted consistently. So they don't get jobs. So a small portion of them strike back and turn to crime. Which gives people good reason to be wary of random blacks. And so it goes.

IMHO the proper role of government is to deal with aspects of life where people's self-interest would lead to the detriment of society as a whole. Prejudice is one such case. For instance, take this case. Was the police officer's reasoning wrong? No. But when you have police like that on the street, what happens to the black guy who legitimately makes a nice wad (which people that age sometimes do do through music, movies, etc), and buys himself the truck he always wanted? Why that kid is going to get pulled over again, and again, and again...

Is this case stupid? Yeah. It is. Totally moronic. No doubt about it.

But in the larger scheme of things I am not at all sure it is that bad.

Cheers,
Ben

ObRandomPS: Did you know that Miranda's murder was never solved? You see the prime suspect exercised his right to keep silent...