Are stigmas and and prejudices, inherently based on fear, ignorance and hatred?

[downbeatplumb]

I have thought often of how prejudice, stigmas, and hatred work, and it seems to me that the people who feel hatred (the kkk, homophobes, etc) are often doing so out of a sense of fear, and are ignorant of the people they hate. In essence, they don't understand why they exist, so they hate them. I feel that with understanding eliminates this hatred, in whatever sense it may be. If someone raped your daughter, for example, if you figured out that that person has a specific part of their brain that lacks empathy, you may say that they were destined by nature to be a rapist and have more sympathy. Or, if it turned out that they were raped as a child, then it was nurture which made them a rapist. Either way, even in the most extreme cases, it seems that an understanding, a cool calm and rational understanding free of emotional response, absolves hate. What is your opinion?

That is to say that hatred, prejudice, fear, are the categories of emotional responses. Whereas understanding does not involve this sort of thinking. Perhaps you could even liken it to the difference between the sober, rational, scientific mind, and the irrational, emotional, religious mind.

I am prejudiced against people who put themselves in certain boxes.

For example members of the KKK, they have chosen to be part of a racist organisation and to dress really badly.

They have decided to be part of a club and can be dismissed as the worst humans you could meet.