When Does Personal Opinion End and Prejudice Begin?

I think personal opinion is anything you don't act upon. We cannot control people's thoughts, but we can try to change their minds.

Prejudice for me is anytime a person takes their bad opinion beyond words and acts on them, or allows them to affect decisions they make.

 

There is no clear distinction. I speak out against what is wrong or harmful, and so do they. We just disagree on what is wrong and harmful. I can promise you one thing. The world will not become a better place if we allow things like homophobia, misogyny and racism to go unchallenged, and yet by a great many definitions, the simple act of challenging someone's opinion is offensive or hateful.

 

It's prejudice when you act upon it, it's opinion when you say it and have no action to it. Opinions are open to change, whereas prejudice is not.

 

1.) There are many things that can be said that will offend large groups of people
2.) "Hateful" seems a bit subjective.
3.) Real inferiority? What do you mean by that?
4.) "Reasonable" people are sometimes hypocrites.

 

I think prejudice begins when you won't accept that there can be any exceptions to what your opinion says even when faced with evidence which contradicts it, or you don't have an opinion which is falsifiable. That's when you're no longer judging because you're not listening to reason or observation. You're pre-judging, because you're dismissing something before knowing it.

It crosses the line from opinion to prejudice when you refuse to listen to anything else or you can't/won't defend your ideas since at that point you've abandoned reason and judgement and lost the ability to call the idea an opinion.

To use a Sherlock Holmes quote I saw at school, I think you could say prejudice is born when "Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts".

Opinions can be any measure of hateful, offensive, pejorative, exclusionary etc. but when they're not open to change, compromise, disproof or competition/attacks then that's prejudice, since again you're dismissing before you hear and pre-judging.

 

As far as I'm concerned, prejudice is an opinion. People are free to their opinions and free to be prejudiced. It just means I'll try to change their mind and resent them for their bigoted views until they do.

 

It becomes prejudice when logic goes out the window and the person does things for no other reason than because they have this belief. In my opinion, anyway.

 

This is key here. For every opinion out there, there is an opposite one. Prejudice is offensive, but opinion can be too.

 

My opinions can be offensive. Like I hate the Queen. That is my opinion and it offends people. So it is both. So my views are opinions and offensive.

 

I interpreted prejudice as the judgement of someone because they are part of a group, and not due to their own merits and flaws.
So, for example, someone who has a negative opinion of LGBT people but changes their view when they meet one of us, learn about the community, etc. isn't prejudiced.
Someone who has a negative opinion of LGBTs, doesn't listen to reason, uses words such as "faggot" in a negative context, and judges LGBT people negatively, no matter who they are? That, I'd call prejudiced.

Any given opinion can be offensive.
I eschewed the "political correctness gone mad" movement because of that.

 

Allow me to add to my previous post. Prejudice is everyone else's opinion.

 

For me at least. Prejudice begins when personal experiences or mob mentality overrides civility, tolerance and common sense.

An opinion can be crude or candid, But it doesn't have to mean it's prejudiced all the time if it opposes something. :3