Is all prejudice based on fear?

Yes.

To an extent, but I believe once again that ignorance trumps everything else.

Prejudice is based on sloppy, lazy thinking. It’s a shortcut for avoiding the mental due diligence of looking at individuals in all of their complexity and nuance. It’s far easier to divide the world into broad categories, assign fixed characteristics to each category, then assume that individuals within each category have these characteristics.

This is a holdover from our more primitive brains. Most non-human animals operate on all kinds of prejudices; lacking the neural firepower to understand the unreliability of generalization, these shortcuts are the best they can manage. Our human brains can do better. It’s true that complex thinking is a resource-demanding process, and that we tend to take the easier road much of the time.

No. Sometimes it’s based on habit or ignorance (both of which are mental shortcuts, like @thorninmud said). It often leads to fear, though.

Partially, but it’s based on many other factors, too, including one’s family influences, environment, and personal experiences.

No. I don’t think it is only fear. I think it can be closed mindedness, and even over-confidence, and arrogance.

Let’s take an example in the news now. Arguably Donny Drumpf is one of the most openly prejudiced people around. Do you think he fears Mexicans? No! He just considers them worthless trash that should be dumped like trash over a magical invisible wall. Imagine his response if is daughter came home and said she was dating and became pregnant by one.
I seriously doubt his reaction would be fear.

Hey ya Keith, long time no see, anything shaking’ at Nahooy? (Agnostic Guy here).

Luckyguy—I hope you don’t mind me singling you out here. But your answer epitomizes the nature of prejudice.

You are repeating a lot of the rhetoric and vitriol which people love to repeat about the President of the United States—Donald Trump. You are proud to ridicule his name—classic namecalling as is done by those who are prejudiced.

Donald Trump hates Mexicans? Isn’t that a popular stereotype of Trump we are bombarded with daily in the media? My church has a ministry to Hispanics and I do not see a lot of real fear in the Hispanic community about Donald Trump. The fear that DOES exist has been because they have heard of this supposed hatred so many times in the media. All illegals in this country have feared being caught and deported for many, many years.

No one EVER accused Donald Trump of being prejudiced before he was running for president. Strange, isn’t it? Trump has always emphasized using whoever is best for the job, and that’s how he runs billion-dollar enterprises. A prejudiced, unhinged person would not be able to run a successful business empire. He hires whoever is best for the job, and fires those who run contrary to those goals.

Donald Trump does not hate any group or race of people though he has broadbrushed a few who, statistically speaking, have been associated with certain illegal activity such as terrorism or drug cartels. In actual acts, his emphasis has been to deport the criminals themselves, not randomly targeting citizens and immigrants.

I don’t want to come across as a “holier than thou’—but to corrupt and ridicule someone;s name or inadequately typecast their character and repeat popular slurs and stereotypes—well, it comes across as immature and—well, the epitome of what prejudiced people do.

To answer the question—ignorance and hate are the base of active prejudice, Prejudiced people do namecalling, typecasting, hateful sturs and stereotypes of groups and people they hate and usually know very little about (except that they pass on from other prejudiced people).

The news has made Hispanics cautious and fearful—but no particular fear if they know the real Donald Trump. My minister is Hispanic.

Fear. It’s all fear. Willfull ignorance is based in fear. These days with the tools available to us, the knowledge is there, but often willfully ignored—it is the fear that things are more complicated than they appear to be, more complicated than you were told. It is the fear of the hard work of using one’s intellectual capacity to understand the details and circumstances of others. The fear that you have been wrong all your life. The fear that your parents and grandparents were wrong. When you ultimately buy into the prejudices you were taught while young, it is based on fear. The fear that things aren’t that simple. There is always a choice and prejudices are chosen based on fear of the strange, the unknown, the untested, untrustworthyness, unreliability, the fear of danger, and fear that the people before you were wrong. Minds close because of fear. People stop listening because of fear. People get charged up, they get angry, and they strike out due to fear.

It’s all fear.

@Yellowdog No one EVER accused Donald Trump of being prejudiced before he was running for president.

Although I’m unable to document it at this moment, I remember there being several comments about “institutional racism” within the Trump Organization and related entities, such as “The Apprentice” and the pageants.

“There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the fearful minds of men. For the record, prejudice can kill and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. The pity of it is that these things cannot be confined once they are out in the open.”
—Rod Serling, Epilogue, The Monsters on Maple Street, (The Twilight Zone, S1-E22) 1960.

Police dogs were attacking black people in the streets while marching for voters rights in the South when he wrote that. I wonder how many of his viewers made the connection.