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we tend to look for explanations, for ways to understand what is so difficult to be understood.
The epistemological perspective tends to see prejudices within the framework of a priori knowledge, as a knowledge open to be scrutinized in every possible way, but (not so different from a more or less plausible hypothesis) not negative per se—neither negative from the viewpoint of the universality of rights nor from the viewpoint of positive recognition, as long as it is open to revision by empirical evidence (Szabo 2005). Again: prejudices can be adjusted, prejudices can be reversed—but we cannot live without them.
Prejudices are not bad as such—but under certain circumstances, they do have a negative impact on society. This tendency to judge the other in a negative way, to see (perceived or real) difference as a possibility to improve our own standing, cannot easily be reconciled with an understanding of human rights and the creed that “all men are born equal”. The other is seen, more often than not, in a negative way: as less worthy than we tend to see ourselves.
Education can diminish the negative side of prejudices—and/or create positively oriented prejudices. Indigenous people such as “Native Americans” or Canada's “First Nations” have become—after centuries of being the object of more or less negative attitudes—the object of a positive prejudice. Negative and positive stereotypes have been competing from the very beginning of European colonialism. To a certain extent, negative stereotypes were challenged by positive ones. The cruel and uncivilized heathen on the one side, the “noble savage” on the other: this contradiction can be welcomed as a significant possibility to make a prejudice compatible with the concept of basic human rights. But intellectually, even the positive stereotype must still be considered a prejudice because it is not based on empirical evidence but on an ideological perception, and still it tends not to judge an individual due to his or her merit but due to a collective attribution. The positive stereotype is just the other side of the prejudice's negative side.
This is just one example which illustrates that prejudice is not prejudice. Any kind of prejudice is the result of a flight from complexity. The