Sometimes the prejudice of an uneducated person does not worry me as much as the prejudice of an educated person.
Someone who never had the opportunity to get an education may have learned many of their beliefs from family and the environment around them, without having the chance to question or investigate them.
But when someone has studied for years, read books, seen the world, and still judges people only by their ethnicity, language, religion, or where they come from, a serious question comes to mind:
What did all that education really change?
The painful truth is that education does not always remove prejudice.
Sometimes it gives a prejudiced person more tools to defend their prejudice.
An uneducated person may express prejudice in a few simple sentences. But an educated person can find arguments for the same prejudice, interpret history in their own favor, and even create logic to justify their hatred.
This is where prejudice becomes more dangerous.
Prejudice does not always come from ignorance.
Sometimes it comes from fear.
Sometimes from a feeling of superiority.
Sometimes from the wounds of the past.
Sometimes from family and environment.
And sometimes from a deep attachment to an ethnic group, language, political party, or leader.
When this attachment becomes too strong, a person no longer sees the truth as it is. They see the truth as they want it to be.
Criticize their leader, and they feel that you have insulted them personally.
Point out a mistake made by their ethnic group, and they immediately become defensive.
Show them evidence that goes against their beliefs, and instead of questioning those beliefs, they try to discredit the evidence.
This is when we understand that having a degree and having an open mind are not the same thing.
To me, a truly educated person is not someone who only finds the mistakes of others.
A truly educated person is someone who also has the courage to see and accept their own mistakes.
Perhaps this is one of the hardest tests of our character:
If one day the truth goes against my ethnic group, my leader, my political party, or my beliefs, will I still stand with the truth?
If the answer is yes, then education has given us more than a degree. It has also changed the way we think.
But if we accept the truth only when it benefits us, we may be educated, but we still have not learned how to think freely.
Noor Wodjouatt
