at the root of racismis the fact of prejudice. derived from the latin noun, praejudicium, meaning judgment based on prior decision, the term prejudice in english took on the idea of prejudgment with the feeling tone a version or hostility. applied to race, then, prejudice means aversion for an individual or group, prejudicated upon inadeuate knowledge. usually, a whole group is categorized in terms of a few ideas about one of its members. such overcategorization, as professor gordon allport obseves, is perhaps the commonest trick of the mind. given a thimbleful of facts, he says we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub.thus the prejudiced person makes unwarranted generalizations about a group on the basis of a limited knowledge of an individual member.