People operate effectively with heuristics. Note I said effectively, not correctly or justly. Schemas, scripts, rules of thumb, whatever you want to call it, people use them. I know how unfortunate it is when someone receives different treatment based on this method of determination. If you belong to any class of person, especially a class that is a minority, you have been subject to heuristic.
When you meet someone, you are assessing them immediately. You ask them what they do, you learn their origin, you use their surface characteristics to know their interior. Their rolex or nasty case of gingivitis allows you to group them, to put them in the correct box for processing. You judge them based on very limited information, combined with previous knowledge of persons you've known, to arrive at your bias.
I'm tall, white, college-educated, middle class, male. This would be the power class, as most people see it. But I get treated differently because of it, without anyone knowing me beyond that. That's a prejudice. When someone sees a guy with spiked hair, sunglasses, ed hardy shirt, and ripped as hell, and calls them a douche (or a prick), that's a prejudice. In college, he was probably a frat boy, the one who has "bros" and "hos", and in high school he was popular, maybe a jock even, etc. He belonged to the power group, and received labels and predeterminations as a result.
Don't confuse this for sympathy, many of them are pricks, although I think they don't deserve judgment or different treatment before getting to know them. They receive a label and title to make the interactions faster. Some people might say seeing a guy like the one described would lead to immediate avoidance maneuvers.
No one deserves a pejorative and hateful label based on something out of their control. If you're a guy, you don't deserve to be called a prick just for existing. If you're a woman, you don't deserve to be called a bitch. If you're part of an ethnic group, you don't deserve to be assigned a racial slur for shits and grins. If you're homosexual, you don't deserve to be called an ugly name.
If you are a guy who thinks he owns the world and treats everyone like shit because of it, you deserve to be called a prick (or a douche, or whatever label you want). If you are a girl who wants dinner purchased for her, nags too much, and believes you're the sexiest thing in a 100 mile radius, you deserve to be called a bitch (or nag, or the dreaded C word). If you are a black guy who calls me "white boy" while we play basketball and act like a Michael Bay portrayal of the African-American male, you deserve to be called a racial epithet. If you are a dude who is offensively gay (and by offensively, I mean using your sexuality to terrorize everyone and become a martyr to everything everywhere beyond the reasonable person standard) you deserve to be called a fag.
The words are used to describe and label a person falling into a certain class of behavior. Like the douchebag in the ed hardy shirt, people will be categorized faster, more economically thanks to their actions. Being gay or black or a woman doesn't give you a free pass from heuristics and prejudice: act like one, and you can be called that. Don't act offended that I called you a stupid bitch.
There are things I am and take part in which make me a minority as well. Most people take part in things which classify them as minority. My plight doesn't compare to the oppressed classes I have mentioned, and I take part in these things by choice, and I always will have the privilege of being a white male and etc and so forth. Most people find themselves in the minority in some way, judged either as different or the same from the person in question.
This is how we operate, the scripts ease our world.
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