Culture, as defined in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, is a: the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon man's capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group c: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a company or corporation. Interestingly, this was the fifth and last available definition. This definition, however, is longwinded and not terribly accessible, so a better definition of culture is given in Dr. Dogbe's book, Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies: "the socially learned ways of living found in human societies it embraces all aspects of social life, including both thought and behavior."" .
There are several subtypes of culture; for the purpose of this essay, nonmaterial culture will be the focus. Nonmaterial culture refers to the "values, beliefs, laws, morals, traditions and customs that define people's goals, aspirations, expectations, likes and dislikes, frames of reference, logic, thought patterns, and needs."" By the definition, then, nonmaterial culture strongly influences society's ways of thinking and behaving. Values, beliefs, laws and morals shape traditions and cultures "they don't just influence the way we think and behave, they dictate how we think and behave. That being said, we can look at what role culture plays in the development of prejudiced thinking and behavior in the United States.
Prejudice is literally pre-judging, or a preconceived judgment or opinion. I always like to look at the synonyms Word offers for words; for prejudice it offers narrow-mindedness, intolerance, bigotry, and chauvinism (a few have been left out). This is interesting to me because the connotation of the word brings racism immediately to mind. Chauvinism, however, connotes sexism against the females while narrow-mindedness connotes intellectual judgment, in my opinion "it is an interesting list of synonyms because of their different connotations.
