Overcoming Prejudicial Conditioning

• Prejudicial thinking is acquired involuntarily at an early age, from incidents that were both emotionally painful and harmful.
  
• We cling to our prejudices because we have not been offered effective, supportive ways of ridding ourselves of it.
  
• Guilt and blame are ineffective motivators for change and can actually inhibit flexible thinking regarding prejudice.
  
• Eliminating institutionalized prejudices such as racism requires healing not only those who perpetrate the prejudice, but people who have been systematically wounded and have internalized the mistreatment.
  

Two Level 2 participants
supporting each other
to overcome prejudice.

Refining listening skills
As program participants learn to deal with bigoted remarks and behaviors, they refine their listening skills and put the three principles of optimal learning into practice. While learning these processes, they also discover how childhood disempowerment can create present-day emotional reactions that interfere with decisive, thoughtful action.

Participants agree that the tools learned in this program are extremely valuable and can be applied to many areas of one's life besides dealing with acts of discrimination.
PREREQUISITE: Completion of Level One