I understand it's important to deal with prejudice, but it makes me nervous talking about it.

Dealing with this issue is anxiety provoking. And the anxiety is a signal that we have to keep dealing with it. In addition to encouraging avoidance of unfamiliar others, anxiety may play another role in maintaining the psychology of prejudice. Anxiety generally interferes with our more complex and subtle thought processes and motivates us to resolve a situation quickly. For example, anxiety prompts the fight-or-flight response. Both responses-fight and flight-imply a hierarchical view of an encounter: Either I'll fight the other and try to come out on top or I'll give up and run away and avoid being dominated. When anxious, we tend to return to primitive, simplistic, and automatic thoughts and behaviors, such as dichotomous thinking characterized as all-or-nothing, us-versus-them, win-or-lose, or black-and-white. It is in this kind of thinking in terms of dichotomies that stereotypes thrive.