Let’s get the bad news out of the way; it’s never going away. Discrimination of any sort must be looked at from the “discriminator’s” viewpoint; his education, his upbringing, his environment contribute a great deal, if not completely, to shape his view of the world around him. One must realize that discrimination is a behavior, learned or adopted, towards something or someone. We sometimes refer to it as preference. In some instances, we would call it a choice and in yet other scenarios we would refer to it as a bias.

If the bias behavior is not kept in check, it would inevitably lead to prejudice; unfortunately, this progression of the behavior, sometimes reinforced by events or happenstance, will “evolve” to make way for discrimination. Interestingly, the reversal of the process is much harder than its acquisition; bombarded with reinforcements and sharing the same environments with those of similar behaviors, prejudice (and/or discrimination) feels natural. It was simple; it was just a bias.

Let’s get other bad news out of the way; everyone has biases. So, we’re good, right?

Watch this column, as we will delve into the details of this topic in the hope that the truth will help close this big divide.

Follow Mike Ducheine on Twitter: @mducheiney

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