Prejudice experience - Essay Example

However, prejudice is not necessarily a disadvantageous phenomenon as explained by Ruchlis because it may be in our favor in a few instances. Being a male Indonesian of Chinese ethnicity, I have also been the recipient of prejudice based on stereotypical thinking. A number of stereotypes portray Indonesians as essentially lazy South East Asians who lack discipline, are illogical and resist change. In Indonesia, the Chinese ethnic group is seen as financially dominant people most of whom own businesses in important town centers.

However, this impression is fundamentally flawed as various ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia also do menial jobs such as brick layering and may not earn even USD 2 per day. Because of the business outlook, many Indonesians feel that the Chinese are here to steal the resources from the locals and have occupied all the important and well paid positions. While the income gap may be present but it is not significant enough to conclude the monetary dominance of one ethnicity over the other. Doing so is plain generalization without consideration of complete facts.

Various generalizations regarding Indonesia exist including those regarding religion with many people viewing Indonesia as a predominantly Muslim country although it is explicitly a secular state with diverse ethnicities. Moreover, there exist various stereotypes about age and knowledge. This view stems from the understanding that bigger age implies greater experience which is acquired over a long period of time rather than over night. However, to use this stereotype to form a judgment of one’s knowledge level may be misleading.

In this world of technology, the internet acts as a useful resource for children at a very young age to acquire knowledge which previous generations might not have thought of. So, young age does not imply irrationality or lack of knowledge in any sense. In fact, the correlation between age and knowledge is very flexible and