Why Could I not See the Prejudice Within Myself

Why Could I not See the Prejudice Within Myself?

Young B. Lee

At the age of twenty-two, after years of wandering and searching, I embraced Christianity. My newfound faith burned within me with an almost uncontrollable passion. Leaving everything behind, I set out on a mission to share the Gospel.

One day, while going from door to door in an affluent neighborhood, I knocked on the door of a beautiful home.

A well-dressed woman, perhaps in her forties, opened the door and welcomed me warmly.

“I have been so lonely,” she said. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

Those were her very first words.

But I was twenty-two, overflowing with religious conviction. Without the slightest hesitation, I replied, “Ever since I accepted Jesus Christ, I have never felt lonely.”

She had opened her heart to me, revealing her loneliness. Yet there was no room in my heart to receive it. My mission, as I understood it, was to preach the Gospel, not to understand the loneliness of a woman standing before me.

I returned home that day with a sense of accomplishment, believing I had fulfilled my duty. Yet even now, more than sixty years later, I have never forgotten that brief encounter. As the years passed, the memory of her face and my growing sense of regret did not fade. Instead, they became more vivid.

Some time later, I came to America to pursue my education. I attended an English class filled with young students from many parts of the world. One day, our teacher wrote a single word on the blackboard:

Prejudice.

She asked us to write an essay about it.

It was a word I had never seriously considered before. I believed myself to be a person without prejudice. Faced with the assignment, I could not think of a single thing to write. I sat there, bewildered and embarrassed, struggling to find even one sentence.

From that day forward, the word prejudice became a lifelong question that would never quite leave me.

Years later, I spent six years serving in a hospital within an African American community. I listened to the struggles and sorrows of Black patients, studied the lives of their remarkable leaders, and worked alongside Black physicians.

Something unexpected began to happen.

The more deeply I came to know my colleagues as fellow human beings, the less conscious I became of the color of their skin. Eventually, I scarcely noticed it at all.

Through those relationships, I learned that prejudice does not disappear simply because we reject it intellectually. It begins to crumble when we truly encounter another person, listen to their story, and come to understand their humanity.

Around that time, I had a friend who was an elder in his church. He was immensely proud of his accomplished son, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy who had served as a naval officer.

His son eventually returned to America with his wife and three children, settling in San Francisco.

Naturally, his friends were eager to meet his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Yet whenever the subject came up, he found one excuse after another to avoid introducing them.

There was only one reason.

His daughter-in-law and grandchildren were Black.

He struggled to acknowledge and accept the racial prejudice that had quietly taken root within him.

Watching him, I found myself asking a troubling question before passing judgment:

If I had been in his position, would I truly have been any different?

I could not honestly claim that I was entirely free of the same prejudice.

Looking back, I remember sitting helplessly in that English classroom, unable to write a single sentence about prejudice because I was so certain that I had none.

Only after many years did I begin to understand something far more unsettling.

Prejudice does not arise only from hatred, contempt, or hostility toward others. Sometimes it grows out of our deepest convictions.

When our certainty that we are right becomes too great, we may lose the ability to see the pain and feelings of the person standing directly before us.

That was the deepest prejudice hidden within me.

At twenty-two, I had gone out into the world to share a message of love. Yet when I stood before a lonely woman who needed nothing more than a little human warmth, I became as hard and unyielding as a stone.

I had believed that I was bringing her a great and eternal truth. What I failed to recognize was that, before anything else, she needed someone willing to listen quietly to her loneliness.

For years, I thought the demands of life had caused me to forget that encounter.

But I had not forgotten.

The words I spoke that day had become a thorn, buried deep within my heart.

Only after the passage of many years did that thorn begin to ask me a question:

What kind of love was it that you were trying to share?

Now, having begun to break through my own ignorance and prejudice, I find myself more capable of approaching another person's suffering with humility and tenderness.

Perhaps this is the gift that the thorn has left me: a deeper understanding of what genuine love truly means.

The woman may have forgotten our encounter long ago. Perhaps she never felt wounded by my words at all. I have no way of knowing.

What has remained with me throughout my life is not simply the memory of what I said, but the loneliness of another human being that I failed to recognize behind those words.

That first thorn, born of my own ignorance and prejudice, has gradually become a small awakening—one that has taught me to be more attentive to the suffering of others.

Perhaps that is why, even after all these years, I still cannot forget her.

October 20, 2026
Laguna Woods, California