PREJUDICE by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 11, 1869

PREJUDICE.

By Jos. Clarke

“PREVIOUS and unfavorable bent or bias; premature opinion; injury or wrong of any kind.”—Webster.

It is not generally realized, even by the most correct people, how much they are swayed by prejudice.

When we once allow the slightest prejudice to enter the mind against any one, we are from that moment in danger of doing injustice to the person in question.

We may do this without being aware of it. A look, a tone, a word, uttered while such a prejudice influences the mind, may speak as clearly as possible our true feelings. Or silence, when civility calls for decent reply, or neglect, when politeness demands attention; and a thousand little nameless trifles, in themselves, performed or unperformed, bespeak our true feelings.

In the business of teaching common schools for some twenty-three winters, I have passed from making numerous rules for my pupils, to making rules for myself; and prominent among them is this: “Never for any cause become prejudiced against a pupil;” and I find it is the most valuable and important of them all. It is the key of success in discipline, in a school. I drop this as a suggestion to parents and others in authority. We may sit as jurors, and act with impartiality upon a case brought up for our decision, if we are unprejudiced; but if unfortunately, our minds are biased by prejudice, we cannot safely trust our own decision. But it is still more unfortunate, that prejudiced persons are generally ignorant of the state of their own minds. Reader, is it not so? I do not speak as a victim of prejudice, smarting under its lash; for I fear I have too much favor from my contemporaries, more than a Christian should have; but I fear that it is possible I may have been prejudiced, at times, against others.

JOS. CLARKE.