What is Prejudice? Prejudice is a word that describes the way people sometimes feel toward other people. It is a liking or, more often, a dislike of one person over another without reason.

Prejudice gets started in a person for lots of different reasons, but usually it has to do with feelings that person has about himself or herself. In the story Mark and Paul, we met a boy, Mark,who felt good about himself and what he thought was right. He didn’t need to be a part of the group who teased Paul to feel good about himself. In fact, his strong and caring action led others to see their prejudice — their negative feelings about Paul — as unfair and hurtful.

Your circle grows.
When we are born the circle of people around us, the group we belong to, is very small. As we grow,this circle grows too. Some of that growing is like getting bigger feet — we have no control over it! But some of it we do have control over. At different points along the way we open our circle to let new and different people in, or we close it. It is when we close others out of our circle that prejudice has a chance to grow.

Keep Your Circle Open
In the story Mark and Paul, one way of thinking about what Mark did is that he "opened his circle" of friends to include someone who was different from himself. If your circle is closed it is easy to develop negative feelings for those outside it. You may feel afraid of them or confused by their behavior because you don’t know it very well. If you open your circle to include new and different people, it is very difficult for prejudice to grow.

Usually ideas about a person or group of people, which are not true, are used as reasons for the feeling of prejudice.These ideas are called stereotypes.

For example:
Blonds have more fun.
Black people are better at sports than White people.

Fill in the next page and see how your circle has grown already!!.