What makes a person racist/prejudice?

Just wanna know what everyone thinks makes a person racist/prejudice.

Nurture. How they were raised and who they spend time around.

Voting Republican is a big red flag.

@the_stegman:

Too many factors.

When someone discriminates solely based on race.

When people have little exposure to the stereotyped culture.

Choices.

Country Music...........

How they're raised. Houses of ignorance keep breeding ignorance.

Not ever interacting with different people.

A racist person has a personal hatred towards a certain race, religion or culture of people. They despise those people at all costs such as harass them, embarrass them, doing anything to them in a negative way.

A prejudice person isn't always racist but quick to judge another person by their looks, their clothes or their attitude. They have a picture of what they imagine that person to be in their minds.

Re-occuring bad experiences.

Contact with other people

Given what i've seen recently apparently absolutely anything from a harmless observation to actually being racist.........

Ignorance

Internal biological variables present within all, that are subject to various types of affect from external environmental variables. That and Fox news.

Wearing white sheets and burning a cross?

Their whiteness and privilege

BB

I'd say it's more of a view a person has about a particular race (e.g. African Americans), usually sparked the instant that person sees a person from a particular race. The most dangerous type of racist is a person who rarely expresses his views with those closest to him and never express those views in open. If they are in a position of power, which is true in a large number of cases, they simply do (e.g. will grade African Americans far more harshly than Asians and Caucasians, can find an infinite number of excuses for having failed to hire an African American applicant, or many reasons to support a judgement against an African American in an employment discrimination suit); the ones who express their views publicly are usually not in a position of power, but secretly have the ear of people who have a position of power. I actually respect a racist who expresses his views publicly more so than I do the ones who keep their views private. The ones who keep their views private are the ones responsible for the social and economic plight of African Americans. These people also will not socialize with African Americans in college, either assuming they are smarter or not really interested in information that will debunk their assumptions that they are smarter.

There are other forms of prejudice also and they are similar to racism. Actually a more primitive or older form of racism, the very parent of racism, is the practice of adversely judging a person based on looks from a person who is in a position of power; judging a person based on looks could be for purposes of enrolling a person in school, especially hiring a person for a job, retaining someone in employment, promoting someone in employment, providing housing, casting for a film roll, accepting someone as a news anchor, etc; usually, discrimination based on looks can be difficult in the science field, but can and is done; it would be very difficult to do with a physician, but can happen at the educational level. Discrimination based on looks is blatantly acknowledged and ignored; until society can get past this form of discrimination, turmoil will always haunt/prevent a peaceful existence in developed societies. Karma is the persistent terrorist attacks.

Inbreedin'

@dshipp17: I agree with this 100%. I'd rather have someone be openly racist as opposed to suppressing or hiding their prejudices.

Just wanna know what everyone thinks makes a person racist/prejudice.

very little is needed to make someone racist/prejudice

I'd said that prejudice comes naturally with life experience. We unconsciously like to associate things that are foreign to us to concepts we are more familiar with so that we feel that we have a greater understanding of it and can control or limit these things we have not fully comprehended. It a way it's our own biological attempt at preventing fear of the unknown by projecting artificial expectations onto those things.

An example would be thinking "if most drivers stop their cars when there's a red light then I am safe to cross the street if they are facing a red light." I don't know every driver nor do I know if this particular driver is going to attempt to be the light or ignore it entirely but I assume that the driver will stop because my experience crossing roads has taught me that it is a safe time to cross.

Racism and discrimination are not natural because it attempts to compartmentalize people by their physical features and/or social class. Since people vary widely within all perceived races, they are too complex to generalize into specific stereotypes. If one were to socially interact with a member of another race eventually you would find significant differences between individuals and their stereotypical racial portrayal via media.

And you can probably keep from voting for someone like this by mistake or making critical decisions involving someone like this by mistake.

@sneakerhead23: It has to do with people's upbringings and how the parents taught them to act. It's something called Innate learning, it's when babies learn from the parents, I went over it in my blog

What is Innate Fears? (Psychology Series)

If an adult, stupidity. If a child, stupidity of the parents.

It's bad training, whether by by parents, the social strata one finds ones'self in or both. But it is not innate. Like queerhate is not innate.

@bruxae: Nope, not this at all. May I ask what race you are to prove my point?

Really, really bad parenting and ignorance.

Judging from the answers, I think people are answering two different questions.

Some are answers what makes a person racist/prejudice. As in, what forces, whether outside or internal molds a person to hate or dislike a group of people.

Others are answering "What does a person do or say that makes them appear racist/prejudice" as in, how would a racist person act and behave.

I'm not sure which the OP is asking.

@wolverine08 thinks I'm racist :P

Im not saying it's always the case, just giving an alternate explanation that I believe is sometimes the case. Imho, if you have several bad experiences with a certain race different then your own it get's very easy for a shortsighted person to judge the race as a whole, whether the poor experiences where in fact the majority of experiences or not, unfair judgement sometimes happens due to them. It's in no way a justification or acceptable, yet a fact. To make my point more simple; If you first two apples have gone bad, you might believe you don't like apples.

And no, I won't tell you my race because it's besides the point. And I won't assist you in painting me out as a racist for having an opinion different from yours, which I suspect is what you are trying to do. If im wrong I apologize, if I am not - try not to jump the gun like that, please, that kind of over sensitivity only serves to further racism, thanks.

Flaws of discriminated. Flaws of discriminator.
Only a fool will say that the only reason is lack of training, their are also very objective reasons and without solving them people are only pretending that they are solving problem. In fact this is only making it worse.

This. Its all about the conditions one goes thru during their nurturing years. One isn't born racist.

Ignorance. Lots of ignorance.

Human nature. Every person on Earth right now has some form of prejudice. Nobody is 100% politically correct.