Do you think there are people who are truly devoid of any prejudices?
 

Absolutely not. Without them we couldn\'t function and make decisions.

And you? What do you say?

I don't think it is possible to be devoid of them. That said, you can certainly be aware of your prejudice and biases. If you can be aware of them then you can learn to deal with them.

Absolutely not. Without them we couldn't function and make decisions.

No. No there are not. People who claim they have no prejudice however...

No.
I don't know.
Probably not.

But that's no excuse.

I think it can be pretty hard to have none. You may not realize what they are until you are faced with them.

I think it's normal to have biases for and against things. But I don't think a person HAS to hate a group of people, so in that sense I can see how a person can have no prejudices at all.

Freedom from cognitive biases is a theoretical state, but it's certainly something to aspire to.

It's not human nature to like everything and/or everyone.

Freedom from bias doesn't necessary mean liking everyone. I see it more as perfect objectivity.

Even if we suppose that perfect objectivity is possible, humans are pretty far down the evolution ladder to reach it just yet.

Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus.

Hell if I remember where I saw this originally, but...

That was great.

Yes there are. They're called children, until otherwise taught.

I'm not sure about that - I think even kids may have some built in, animalistic prejudices. Not prejudices as strong as those reinforced by conditioning, but I've seen even very young children (2 years old) gravitate towards those who are most like them in appearance (as in the black children play with other black children, whites with whites, etc) - not to the exclusion of all others, just as a first choice option.

Hmm...an interesting point. I wonder about that though. I definitely feel that children are much less prejudicial innately until otherwise taught by their parents and environment. Perhaps your experience was coincidental? I would be interested to explore this more in depth as I am curious about it. There has to be some study done about this.

To be honest I work at a multi-specialty clinic and I see children playing in the waiting area quite frequently. We see patients from a very wide range of ethnic groups and the children if they gravitate towards eachother in any way it tends to be more age related than anything. Of course you would have to factor in that as most clinics only have so many toys to occupy kids time they have to share the coloring tables and the play equipment if they are going to use it at all. It would be a rather limited observation.

I haven't found this to be true at all.

is it possible to have no biases at all? I'd think being able to discriminate (and by that I mean being able to choose and make preferences) is fundamental to the human condition.

As adults, I don't think so. I've posted here about how different elements of my upbringing inadvertently and unintentionally introduced racist biases into my thinking. The positive side is what I learned from that and what I did to overcome those biases and realize how ridiculous they are. On the other hand, my mom would probably say she isn't racially biased while half of what she says that's race related is or might as well be prefaced with "I don't mean to sound racist, but ..." which is invariably an indication that the person talking has serious racial biases.

Just an observation from watching kids as my daughter ages. She's mixed race, so blends a little more than most, and it's definitately more prevelant as the kids age and get exposed to perhaps more prejudicial views (be they from their parents, society, etc) , but I have seen it to an extent with young kids too.

I suppose I'm being confused by the term bias.

Innocuous biases, like favoring Subway over Quiznos Sub for instance, I suppose are different from saying that one dislikes gays.

The children argument is interesting. When I was in second grade a girl from a different race had a crush on me, and I thought she was just swell.

But in describing her to my parents, I said she was a girl. A horrible girl made up of all those nasty girl things.

I think jorgelito is more right than wrong. Children tend not to be prejudiced. There are certain inbred feelings like not touching a snake, but for the most part they don't exist.