About this quote

Prejudice rarely arrives full-grown; it is handed down and absorbed by children before they can question it, until a whole group's standing sinks to match how others have decided to see them. Naming that machinery is the first step to refusing to run it.

When to use it

• A child repeats a slur about a neighboring town simply because a parent said it at dinner, never having met anyone who lives there.
• New hires quietly learn that the warehouse crew is treated as lesser, and within weeks they speak to those workers the same dismissive way.
• A school streams certain students into low tracks early, and teachers' lowered expectations become the ceiling those kids grow up living under.