I have entered into this debate with bigots about many issues. At times I have entertained myself by issuing challenges to bigots of all kinds to prove their beliefs via objective, not subjective, data. If I enter into these debates, I do not go unarmed. I come with plenty of objective studies by reputable sources and I am willing, if needed, to spend hours to find something to back up my position. By that I am referring to such as Stanford studies, medical texts, and the like. Personal opinion is personal opinion and should be treated as such in a debate. When I do that I do it with the stipulation that the data must come from an unbiased source. I eliminate any such things as reliance on religious passages. I have not had ONE person, not one, be able to logically out debate me. The debates either become circular with them repeating the same thing rather than answering me or they become ad-hominum attacks upon myself. Both of these outcomes prove my point: there IS no logic behind prejudice. I have many theories upon why people are bigoted. It could be because they have low self-esteem. It is most certainly because most of them have been raised that way. In that case, then it is a lazy mind that will not examine the teachings.

It's ignorance, plain and simple. And no, if they are prejudiced they can't explain why, because they are ignorant. Most prejudiced people have limited life experiences on which they have created a limited mental model of how things worked for them in the past. They may have met a bad apple of another race or ethnicity and assumed that all people who look like that, act like that. It's like the black cat theory of walking down a street: if you're ignorant and a black cat runs out and you get hit by a car, you may assume the two experiences were linked. It's a faulty causal association.