How Does Prejudice Affect Justice?

Throughout history, prejudice has come in many different forms and styles. The most widespread misconception among our population was that the idea that black people were inferior to white people and women were inferior to men. Also, the pride of the black people—as many white people hated them, they feared and hated whites. We see that throughout history a white man's word over a black man's word must have been the truth, or at least accepted as the truth.

Despite all the history that we have endured as a human race, prejudice is just as widespread and just as destructive. We are given the impression due to doubt without reason that people who wear black are depressed, Goths are suicidal, thinner girls are just anorexic, and that all men are more powerful than women. These stereotypical views of groups who are different to us are neither fair nor accurate within the general population. For many people who wear black, it is simply because all their other clothes are being washed, thinner girls may just have a quicker metabolism, and many men are not better or worse than women. Yet, we as humans set up stereotypes for almost any definable group of people that we meet, simply because we find that it is easier to have a preconceived notion of what to expect from them.

WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT IN OUR OWN WAYS AND THAT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE, unless it turns into a violent or genuinely disruptive outbreak for an illegitimate reason. One of my personal favorite movie quotes from Andie West,"...We call this a battle but what are we fighting for?... Being part of the street used to mean much more than just turf or power... It's about bringing something new to the floor... and it shouldn't matter what we wear, what school or what neighborhood we're from because the best part of the streets is not about what you got, it's what you make of what you've got!..." If you resonate with this or not, at all, please feel free to let me know and why.

Justice is, in several different ways, a matter of opinion—it all depends on your viewpoint. The justice system that we have in place is good overall, but it is not foolproof—and therein lies the fault of our ways. For some astounding reason, we cannot push our nature aside simply because we are asked to do so. If it is our nature to automatically assume a black person, a Muslim, or any other group, then that inclination will for sure follow a jury server into a courtroom. No matter how hard they may try to disregard it and focus on the actual evidence of the case, at that point all "evidence" is null and void. This prejudice can then taint the proceedings and even possibly have an innocent victim convicted of something they did not do. A prejudiced judge is even more dangerous than an innocent—wrongfully convicted—victim being sent to jail. So if justice can be so easily influenced by human nature, then is it really "just"?

By my research, experiences, and evidence, justice can be affected by prejudice very easily. Not any single human being is truly capable of putting their preconceptions completely aside to judge a situation without bias because it has been hardwired into our anatomy. Justice will never be just if it can be influenced by something as trivial as human nature. If the outcome of a serious trial—murder, rape, trafficking—could be determined by someone or something who felt no emotion and made a decision based purely on empirical evidence, maybe our society would be a much safer place with less ignorance.