“Of course,” I added, “this kind of rationalization can perpetuate prejudice among oppressors as well as the oppressed. There have been research studies indicating that people don’t like to believe in an unjust world, and the idea of a world in which bad things happen randomly is unsettling to most people on a deep level—‘If someone receives bad treatment without reason, without deserving it, the same thing could happen to me!’ Because of this, if something bad happens to someone, at least a part of us likes to believe they somehow deserved it. So, when we see groups discriminated against in
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