IIN to wonder why people dislike african americans and judge quickly?

(cont).

Anyways, certain habits of thinking can pretty much become ingrained in a person due to their experiences and the media (I know, obvious), but the problem is that it can be incredibly hard to get rid of it by reasoning alone, for at least two reasons (though there are probably many more that I'm not aware of):

1. You're asking them to use the newer parts of their brains (the parts responsible for conscious thinking and logical thought processes), to override much older parts of the brain, those being the reptilian parts of the brain that govern the subconscious.

2. As it was said previously, people don't actually base most of their beliefs or behaviors on the rational thought processes of their conscious brains; they mostly only use the reasoning parts of their brains to defend beliefs they've come to for largely emotional or subconscious reasons.

And the real clencher? People don't pay attention to information which contradicts their beliefs either; though they think that they've come to their beliefs based on reason and evidence, they mostly only pay attention to evidence which appears to confirm their beliefs, while finding reasons to ignore any information which contradicts their deeply held beliefs (this is known as "confirmation bias"). Add all of this together, and it's gonna be a real bitch to try and convince people to drop their beliefs on reason alone.

The media representations and cultural depictions of black people probably contribute to people's bigotry towards them; even though the majority of blacks aren't criminals, because a lot of criminals happen to be black, people will probably be primed to associate blacks with crime and certain undesirable behaviors if they are repeatedly subjected to this sort of information about blacks via the media, word-of-mouth, or some other source. The fastest and most effective way to eviscerate these preconceptions would be for people to reprise themselves and have more positive experiences with black people, but because the United States (I'm just assuming you're American, sorry if that's not the case) is actually still segregated to a great degree via the intersections of class and race, it's highly unlikely that many whites are ever going to build these positive experiences with blacks. The stereotypes about blacks don't help; because of the things that are often said about blacks, whites are often too afraid to consider ever actually living amongst them to any great degree, and because there's a huge intersection of class and race in this country, with blacks generally being of lower socio-economic standing than whites, whites will generally tend to buy nicer houses in classier neighborhoods, further segregating the two.

The intersection of race and class is important for another reason; because blacks are often of lower socio-economic standing compared to whites, blacks are often affected by the elements of their class, and this is often seen as something intrinsic to their race. People who are of lower classes tend to be less educated, more belligerent, and more prone to crime than those of higher classes, including white people of lower classes; ever seen the way rednecks and white trash behave? The reason why we don't assume that all whites are like this, however, is because whites are generally found in all socio-economic levels of America, including the middle and upper classes. Blacks, however, because they are generally prone to being working-class or lower on the socio-economic ladder, are more likely to have elements of their class attributed to their race.

Sorry, but I'm kind of blanking out now. I hope this comment wasn't too stupid or too long.

And now I'll disappear.