By Walter Williams
Jewish World Review
A fortnight ago, my column made a stab at applying dispassionate analysis to come up with an operational definition for discrimination. Basically, discrimination is the act of choice, and choice is a necessary fact of life. Now let's turn to prejudice, keeping in mind that for sound thinking, one should avoid confusing one phenomenon with another.
Prejudice is a useful term that's often misused. Its Latin root is praejudicium, meaning "an opinion or judgment formed . . . without due examination." Thus, we might define prejudicial acts as decision-making on the basis of incomplete information.
In a world of costly information, people seek to economize on information costs. Imagine heading off to work, you open your front door, only to be greeted by a full-grown tiger. The uninteresting prediction is the average person would slam the door or otherwise seek safety.
Why they do so is more interesting. It's unlikely that person's decision is based on any detailed information held about that particular tiger. More likely his decision is based on tiger folklore or how he's seen other tigers behave. He prejudges, or stereotypes, that tiger.
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