The society can never be free of prejudice and discrimination, just as innate visible differences between people of various origins and backgrounds will always be present as a part of us and our identity that can never be eliminated unless through extreme means. The roots of prejudice and discrimination within us and the society lie deep and have expressed themselves through many forms of social categorisation, group favouritism, racial discrimination and segregation, and not to mention, the dark brutal acts of aggressive treatment towards discriminated out- groups.
During times of economic deprivation and hardships of intense competition between groups for scarce resources, certain group(s) would be easily targeted for scapegoating, with their disadvantaged members being unreasonably blamed for the external situation. Explicit prejudices refer to the overt nature and expression of biased beliefs, attitudes and stereotypical views one hold against people who belong to a different social group. History is full of examples of explicit prejudices which lead to acts of discrimination, whether on the national or more intimate personal level.
In Canada, although we have taken considerable steps to reduce direct overt explicit prejudices and the atrocities being committed against visible minorities, their implicit counterpart remains and leaves much room for research. In our daily routine, we may have encountered only a rare once or few times of people verbally expressing racist or sexist remarks of another, sometimes unintentionally under the influence of anger, or when they noticeably refusing to extend assistance to a person of different ethnicity.
Such gestures may do no physical harm and people, when they perceived themselves being treated so based on their inferiority and others’ lack of acceptance, often do not complain but it shows that under heightened circumstances and pressure, implicit prejudice seeps through to display itself explicitly as an uninhibited extension of automatic processing, especially when one is emotionally aroused. Multiculturalism still needs to be worked on with some efforts to gain not only explicit acceptance but implicit acknowledgement and support as well from a once predominantly white homogeneous society.
Nevertheless, it is promising that we are improving to be as much tolerant as we can. From the lowest but most fundamental level as individuals, we can consciously reshape our attitudes and perspectives. Apart from interpersonal contacts, we could expose ourselves to interesting literature publications, for example free newspapers being distributed as near to us as on the streets, in order to acquaint in detail with a different culture.
We could ask ourselves which part(s) of the Asian and other ethnic cultures particularly appeal to us and make a mental/written list of comparisons between the pros and cons. We could also seek out someone we identify as a fellow in-group who holds positive opinion(s) of a certain out-group and learn from him of what he finds fascinating about that group. We could turn our unfamiliarity into passionate curiosity by asking questions as much as possible or visiting places where visible minorities frequented, widening our horizon and lessening the physical and social distance between us and them.
