Summary and Response of "National Prejudices"

In this article Oliver Goldsmith talks about his encounter with a group of men who were engaged in a conversation about the different characters of the nations of Europe. He then goes on to talk about how one of the men put negative prejudices on the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish and then said that the English were the best. At this remark no one at the table disagreed, but Goldsmith. He turned around and said positive things about the Dutch, French, German, and Spanish and said negative about the English. The point Goldsmith tries to get across is that we shouldn’t be people who believe and say we belong only to a certain group, region, or society; we should be people of the world. The second thing Goldsmith talks about is how everyone, even a gentleman, is guilty of putting prejudices on people. He says that prejudices infect the mind and influence conduct and that prejudices can only be fixed by reading, traveling, and conversing with foreigners.
Overall, I liked this article. It proves that there are prejudices all around us. Prejudices go on between the different races, heritages, and societies and classes. We don’t know or understand what its like for the other group or what they stand for so we place a prejudice on them. But, like Goldsmith said, it can be fixed through reading, traveling and conversing. If we did all this we could learn to appreciate each other and become united. Like the philosopher in Goldsmiths’ article said: we should be people of the world, not people of a group or society or specific origin.