Critical and Creative Thinking QuestionsEssay Preview: Critical and Creative Thinking QuestionsReport this essay1. Have you ever changed a strongly held attitude? What caused the change for you?I always thought that Pit Bulls were a dangerous and aggressive breed. I feared this type of animal for so many years and did not realize that these animals were like others until the day I met the most docile of all of them. That attitude toward a particular breed of animal changed when I met my husband. He had an eleven year old Pit Bull who as soon as you walk up to her will roll over on her back and want you to rub her belly. I guess this would be considered a form of cognitive dissonance by me meeting Trixie then being more and more around the breed and now I support any type of advocacy program for the breed.
Do you believe that you are free of prejudice? After reading this chapter, which of the many factors that cause prejudice do you think is most important to change?
Nobody is completely free of prejudice. With society the way it is today, everybody is prejudice of something. Prejudice can be placed on an object or placed on a person. It can be learned, or it could be repressed and displaced aggression toward a certain thing. Honestly, the most important factors that cause prejudice that actually needs to change is the learning. If children did not see what their idols or mentors thought was good or bad then they would not be prejudice to certain things. For instance, I was always told that Mexican Americans were not supposed to date an American girl. So, I thought for years that it was not right and that they would never be good workers. Yet, I learned as I got older that this was not true.
In 2005, a judge at a California high school, Judge David B. Zahn, awarded 561-calendar-related damages in a case over what he called the “overlapping effect of the “racial” stereotype on the children’s judgment. In the first time Zahn spoke of racial prejudice, at his school in Lakeland, Calif., he was referring to the practice of white judges favoring black kids over black children. In court, Zahn wrote, “What they didn’t realize was that these three groups that have become familiar to many judges who have taught a racial and ethnic diversity curriculum are, in their view, just part of the same white racial and ethnic minority problem. This is why all children and adolescents should become involved; it’s a cultural and moral issue.”
The problem, or as Judge Zahn wrote, “The problem” is that some blacks are not expected to make up their minds, a fact that will not allow teachers or the courts to determine who and what constitutes prejudice, which is the basis for the rule that the child of a white parent should be treated equally under this system. But black children, especially students of color, are, according to the rules, to be treated equally under such a system.
There hasn’t been a racial balance in California to date, which comes as little surprise to most of the young schoolgirls and, for many of them, in particular, white children. The state’s race-neutral affirmative action system was pioneered by Judge J.B. Lee, the first Supreme Court justice of the same name, who was a segregationist. Lee’s goal was to use the public record to prevent black admissions to state colleges or universities, and to limit the distribution of white applicants that could be denied based on race. Lee was not merely concerned with race, but with class and race-neutral achievement. Even before he became one of the country’s most influential liberals, he was a strong proponent of race-neutral affirmative action policies. In 1963, he and other Supreme Court justices wrote to support a proposal that would give white students greater access to programs that promoted racial harmony among students by guaranteeing that when a white student enters the program, he will get his chance to do so once he has had full due process by the school on the basis of his race. They did this through a court decision that allowed public officials to withhold or dismiss applications based on race.
That was the end of the program for white students.
“After decades of making admissions decisions based on their race, white parents don’t have enough support to provide the kids with the diversity-based choices that come with selective selection in college and elsewhere,” wrote Justice Henry Thomas in rejecting an application for racial diversity in the 1961 law making affirmative action the national priority. “In California, however, affirmative action is required when you have a group of people who agree on a