Chapter 9: Prejudice Disliking Others Mag-isog it mga waray In Filipino this line means that Waraynons or people from

the eastern of Visayas especially those that came from the islands of Samar and Leyte are innately fearless and loud. That we are always ready for fights and that nobody can ever make our knees tremble in fear. I myself disagree with this notion. I believe that we, people from the east of Visayas are exactly the opposite of what this claim claims. I believe that the Waraynons are one of the sweetest groups of people in the country. I believe that we, the Waraynons are one of most happiest and friendly people of the Philippines. The notion that we are magisog may be stemmed from the way we pronounce the vowel /e/, in the islands of Samar and Leyte there is no big differences when one pronounces the vowel /e/ and /i/. When pronouncing the word ate waraynons usually say ati; a pronunciation that when heard by another waray would not be of great deal but when heard by others of different language maybe odd and sometimes even funny. We tend to give labels to almost everything that we encounter in our daily lives. Even if we are not able to interact with some of the people we observe we label them, and most often than not, we even label them in negative categorization. We generalize their kind; we say that all Bicolanos are malandi, all Cebuanos are singers, too good-looking guys are homosexual, and people wearing eyeglasses are bookworms and many more generalized notions. Even if we havent spent a day or at least seen one of these people we categorize them in these negative claims. This preconceived negative judgement of a group and its individual members is called prejudice (Myers, 2010). Often heard kinds of prejudices include those for the religion, fat people, sexual

orientation, age and immigrants. Prejudices differ in stereotypes, discrimination, racism and sexism in that stereotypes are overgeneralized attributes to a member of a group which is resistant to new information, example for this is when some say that men dont cry or women are weak. On the other side if prejudice is negative attitude discrimination is the negative behaviour we tend to act. Racism is the prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour we give towards people of a given race and sexism is the prejudicial attitudes and behaviour to a given sex. For example we say that waraynons are maisog we actually became racist, by further saying that male warays are very much maisog we become sexist and not letting warays engage into debates or discussion about sensitive matters because they migfht be pissed off is a kind of discrimination. Majority of the prejudices that we have are very know are influenced by the biases we accumulate around us, from what we hear on the radio, what we read on magazines and can also be formed through

hearsays. Majority of these prejudgements are made on our conscious thoughts, but some of them are unconscious or subtle, they are hidden on the lines that some individual say or act. Subtle kinds of prejudices are those kind of prejudices that we unintentionally give to a specific person we encounter, prejudices that are unconsciously formed because of the judgements that we give for a person even before he says a single word. There are three kinds of sources of prejudices; the social, motivational and cognitive sources of prejudices. Social sources of prejudices spring from the social differences among people which is wanted to be justified. This includes social inequalities in which weaker groups in the society are given more prejudices than those that can exercise power among them, socialization which refers to the kind of environment that we grew up with influences the prejudices that we give to a member of a certain group and social institutions which refers to the effect or influence of the primary institutions to the prejudices that we form such as the school, the church and the government. Motivational sources of prejudices include frustrations and aggression, feeling of superiority to others and the motivation to escape prejudices. These refer to the persons motivation to escape hostilities and desire to be unbiased. Cognitive sources of prejudices include the mental influences that affect our prejudices on people. These includes the phenomenon when we classify people into groups even without prior interaction with them, when we perceive some people to stand out of the crowd and the phenomenon called the just world phenomenon. Too much prejudice also has its negative effects to people. One is that when we already had this fixed stereotypes on a certain member of a group we tend to accept this prejudgement and consider this as true, our memory shifts toward accepting the feature that we give them and later permanently associating it with them, another is that when you give a certain person a prejudgment, sometimes the live through it, they become self-fulfilling and lastly is the stereotype threat this means that fear of individuals to be paired with negative connotations than the positive ones. Reflection: I myself honestly say that I often times give prejudices among people. Most often than not I judge people I came across the street. Most often than not I laugh on how an individual who is a member of a certain group talks, walks and even looks. But I do understand that it is never good to give prejudgements

to people especially when it is negative. I understand that it is very much unfair to them for me to label them just before they let me know who they really are. But I think it is quite impossible to make no prejudices among the people we encounter in our lives. After all, we live in a society, we socialize and we are innately social animals therefore it is our obligation to react and interact with whatever we encounter in this world. It is our right to prejudge and give judgement as a member of this society.