The mechanics of our language can teach us a lot about the mechanisms within ourselves.

Take for example the simple prefixes "pre" and "post." Anyone who has finished elementary school can tell you these are synonyms for "before" and "after." It's pretty ... well, elementary. But if those same word analysis skills are transferred to personal analysis, higher-level learning can occur.

For instance, most people react to the word "prejudice" as if it does not apply to them. But it does. The combination of the prefix "pre" with the root word "judge" makes that perfectly clear, for it is a rare human who does not make judgments beforehand. The denial in our initial reaction to the word stems from our anxiety about the degree of our prejudgment. Was our judgment weak enough to be normal or strong enough to be biased? Such introspection can be disturbing, but even more disturbing is the fact that some people never ask themselves this question, maintaining their opinions as facts - facts without evidence. These are the truly prejudiced among us, and it can be shocking to encounter them.

When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were in a heated race for the Democrat presidential nomination, a stranger approached me in the canned goods aisle of a Hayden supermarket, having somehow pre-judged that he'd found a fellow bigot, or at least an empathetic ear. "I sure hope Hillary wins," he told me. "Otherwise we'll have a bunch of darkies running around all over."

I don't know if I was more flabbergasted over the fact that the man had the audacity to volunteer this illuminating statement to a stranger or over the fact that he had pre-judged me as a person interested in his opinion, but it bothered me. Still does. It even brought up old issues I had with Hayden Lake during the 1980s and '90s when it was home to the Aryan Nations Church. But it bothers me even more that I did not have a brilliant response, saying simply, "Well, worse things could happen," before I walked away. In hindsight I have come up with several good retorts to his racist remark, but I have not used them on the two occasions I have seen the guy in public. I have decided that a confrontation now would be a waste of time and energy.

That's where the "post" prefix comes into play. My judgment that it would be useless to try to change this fellow comes after my encounter with him. His ridiculous and illogical statement provided evidence to allow me to judge him as hopelessly prejudiced. Of course, I could be wrong. One of the most common logical flaws is known as the "post hoc fallacy" in which a false assumption of cause is made simply because one incident follows another. I may have fallen into this fallacy and misjudged the man, but I doubt it. Unlike that opinionated stranger, my judgment comes "post" racial comment, giving me firsthand evidence for my opinion of him. I seriously doubt if this man had any firsthand evidence for his opinion of Barack Obama, nor that he felt he needed any. And I doubt that his opinion has changed for the better now that Obama is the president. Not everyone who dislikes Obama does so based on evidence, and while the man who shocked me with his racial slur may be an extremist, it might be worthwhile if each of us gave ourselves the "pre" and "post" test to see how much of our opinion is based on real evidence.

If all of us withheld our judgments until after we gained enough evidence to make them more accurate, I believe the world would be a better place. I also believe that if we could apply the same analytical skills we use with words to our beliefs and behaviors the world would improve. But I am obviously making this judgment before it happens, so that inevitably makes me prejudiced.

Mike Ruskovich is a resident of Blanchard.