Prejudice Is A Mental Disease ~ War Is Not The Answer

How many people have said, “This is just my opinion. I have a right to my opinion. That’s just the way I am.”? Everyone has a right to their own opinion. However, prejudice is not an opinion, nor is it “just they way I am.” Prejudice is a mental disease, a value of hate that is taught through families, friends, and society.

Prejudice is taught. Prejudice is an ignorant teaching. No one is born with a prejudiced mindset. It is also part of the poverty “rich vs poor” mentality, which includes the “us vs them.” It also infiltrates to the “we are better than them,” no matter which side of belief we are on.

The problem occurs when we atttempt to make prejudice be normal, or just another thought or value system someone has. Society never does well when we pretend any form of mental illness is normal.

How close to mental illness do you choose to get? Prejudice is a choice. No matter what our parents, friends or people in our circle of life believe, we always have the choice in what we believe as an individual.

I have had people tell me they have a right to be prejudiced, that the only crime is to act out in harmful or criminal ways. This is faulty reasoning. What you think about, you bring about.

Another person told me that they carry a gun and could shoot a black person with no problem. This is the form this kind of mental disease takes. It shows the beginning of acting out in hate, not simply “believing what I want to believe.”

I could be bipolar, which used to be called manic-depressive, and say, “I was born like this. It is in my DNA.” That would be an accurate statement. But since prejudice is not in our DNA, it is a mindset that shapes how we choose to lives our lives, to say “I was born like this” is not a true statement.

Prejudice is an ignorant, deformed mental concept. It serves no one. This mental illness has been with humanity since people populated the earth. But prejudice has not been recognized for what it truly is, a mental disease.

Some of us fall into the weakness of prejudice by becoming victims of it, or by becoming bullies by it. Neither side is healthy. Both sides can heal, but only with the truth that all human beings work together, regardless of race, color, creed, gender, age and any other difference which makes us human. Our variety as human beings is what makes us unique and lovable, not deplorable.

If we only look at the crimes and outrage taking over cities in the United States these days, while not looking at what sparked this in the first place, we would be willfully ignorant of the facts. Facts are not opinions.

Changes obviously need to be made. Staying relatively quiet since the days of Martin Luther King, Jr. has not stopped the sinister wave of hate prumulgated through the United States and the world under the subculture of white supremacy including prejudice in all its hideous forms.

We need to take off the blinders to the reality of how we treat all people in all situations, stop red-lining districts, stop political and willful conniving to scam the system, and stop pretending mental illness is normal, and stop putting prejudiced lawmakers and judges, all of whom are examples of the mental illness of prejudice in public office.

The solution to the mental disease of prejudice is to call it what it is, mental illness. Mental illness is treatable. We as a country as well as the world can heal from every form of prejudice. Some people are prejudiced against the mentally handicapped, or people from other lands or beliefs, not just against people who are not exactly the same color of skin that we have. Still, all prejudice is a mental shortcoming, a defect that ought not to be treated as normal.

While systemic racisim has blinded many people, it is not a disease that is incurable. We need to deal with the core issue of racisim, which is prejudice, which erroneously thinks that one brand of people is better than another.

We are all the same in the eyes of God.

There is only one race of people, the human race.

It is time we mentally heal, and educate ourselves to all the goodness diversity has to offer.

It is time we mentally heal, and choose empathy and compassion over mental illness and narcisism.

It is possible to heal with our very next thought. Reach out to help others. Use words of kindness.

It is possible to heal mental illness through prayer, counseling and support.

It is just as easy to build each other up as to tear each other down.

If we start with a positive solution today, we can live in a better world tomorrow.

Because You Deserve To Feel Better