War & Prejudice

War and prejudice are two themes which have been taught over the past semester, thus, in this post, I will be analysing the relation between each of the themes.

Firstly, prejudice. Prejudice is the judging of a person through attributes such as skin colour, nationality, et cetera without actually knowing the person. Prejudice takes on many forms, instead of merely racial prejudice which is the most commonly known, and which is one of the key themes in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. However, there are in fact many other forms of prejudice, for example, class prejudice. Class prejudice is the pre-judging of a person by his social class, and is becoming a more common issue these days. However, these other forms of prejudice are not taken as seriously as racial prejudice, merely because the amount of racist content is greater - racist jokes are definitely more common to jokes about social classes.

Next, war. War is the battle between two parties, resulting in death and usually bitterness. However, war is not all about negativity, as, like during crisis, the best of men are sometimes displayed through courage, sacrifice and the decision of placing morals over practicality.

Now, about how prejudice leads to war. This is of course, an easily imagined scenario - due to the fact that Country X is prejudiced against Country Y, Country X thinks it is all right to invade Country Y for its resources, which it thinks is being misused by people who do not know how to manage resources. Thus, Country X invades Country Y. In fact, other than the above given scenario, prejudice has lead to war, in a slightly different manner. Adolf Hitler was biased against the Jews, thus, he decided to mass murder them until there would be none left. As a result, the Allied Forces had to step in as it violated basic human rights. In fact, prejudice is a violation of basic human rights, as you are assessing him based on preconceived notions, and not giving that person a chance to show who he/she really is.

Finally, war can also lead to prejudice. War results in grudge and bitterness between the two parties. Even if the leaders of the parties have decided to be on friendly terms in order to benefit from it, its people may still be unsatisfied. This dissatisfaction results in people forming opinions of the other party, and when they actually meet, these preconceived notions will create result in the person judging the other party through past events which may not hold true for the person. Thus, war will lead to prejudice.

Instead of being prejudiced, one should instead get to know a person better before forming opinions, as this "prejudice resulting in fight resulting again in prejudice" cycle will just keep continuing. One should not judge another when one has not known the person, and even if one subconsciously forms prejudice against another, one should not display it.