Last week I listened to Charles Swindoll, one of my favorite authors and educators, speaking in his radio program about prejudice. Swindoll said discrimination and prejudice prevent progress and innovation. I have to say I totally agree with that statement.
If you think for a moment, you will soon realize he/she who is prejudice against others (regardless of the nationality or ethnicity of either person) wants, on the basis of his/her prejudice, to keep things as they are, as a way to prevent any changes that could potentially benefit those being discriminated against.
In other words, discrimination and prejudice always want to maintain the status quo. Even in those occasions when it seems change is taking place, it is in many cases just another example of the old proverb about “changing everything so nothing changes.”
I think that some times change, innovation, and progress are not true change and progress, but just modifications and perhaps the adoption of new instruments to continue with the same old prejudice and discrimination, but now in a more subtle way, thus creating less opposition and resistance.
Why talk about prejudice now, when for more than half a century there has been undeniable progress in benefit of minorities? Because, in spite of all the progress already achieved, there is still prejudice and discrimination, perhaps not as open as before, but it is still there and it affects the lives of thousands and thousands of people.
For example, as it did happen in all other states, Colorado (where I live) received thousands of millions of dollars in federal funds for construction projects, as part of the national economy recovery plan.
It was first said that up to 20 percent of that money would be used for Hispanic/Latino companies, because Hispanics represent 20 percent of Colorado’s population. Then, it was reduced to less than 10 percent. At the end, at least in some major projects, only less than 2 percent of the funds were used to hire Latino companies. How can you explain that situation?
Also, there at least 1.2 million Latino students at colleges and universities in this country, or 14 percent of all the students, and thousands of more Latinos will be added this year to that number, thanks to the dedication of those students now completing their high school and to the efforts and countless sacrifices of many Latino parents.
However, in many cases, that undeniable academic achievement is being “celebrated” at schools with insults and racial or ethnic slurs, as it recently happened at a high school east of Denver. But let’s not fool ourselves: we too are racist and have prejudice.
As Dr. John Warwick Montgomery said in a book he published in 1995 (page 122), “If you hold unsound presuppositions with tenacity, facts will make no difference at all, and you will be able to create a world of your own, totally unrelated to reality and totally incapable of being touch by reality.”
That’s why prejudice always deters progress and innovation.