How 'unbiased' can we be?

After reading the article posted here about 'bias and the White Man'I would love to have more input from other members. Pesonally, I believe that bias is unavoidable, the problem is the amount of bias and the reasoning or knowledge behind any bias.

I used to teach at the University (on advertising and journamlism and public opinion) and the bias issue was a big issue among future communicators... there was this idea among students of "objective journalism" where no bias or prejudice will contaminate the news.

Bias = prejudice and prejudice means a judgement made a priori, without us trying or experimenting by ourselves the theory. Well, flash news, without prejudice we as a race wouldn´t have survived. Is prejudice what makes me not to jump from a window from a tall building...In fact I haven´t "experimented" it, ergo I can´t be sure I will not survive and maybe in perfect shape... but my "knowledge" (what I have read, seen, what have been taught to me) makes me "believe" that if I want to live longer, jumping from windows is not a good idea....

Prejudice is part of our lives and of our way of thinking. We can't experiment ALL by ourselves but we still have to make decisions everyday so we use these ´prejudices´ as part of our decision process.

So going back to the original article, I dont believe that White men can´t help it but that all of us no matter gender, race or ethnicity can´t help it at SOME POINT.

Again, the problem is up to what point and on what basis. How much information I have to assume that for example "all latinos are loud". And how we express it (all latinos or most latinos?) and how open I am to learn from experience that maybe not ALL are loud.

We all have prejudices and we need them to survive, the issue is how we acquire them and what we do with them when new information appears, if we are open to that new information or not. The professor I used to teach with, used to give this example: let's assume I have the prejudice that all guys that use earrings are gay. Then my daughter comes home with a boyfriend uses earrings.... my choices are (basically) three:

1) I dont like the boyfriend because I maintain my prejudice so I assume he is gay and in the closet just using my daughter as a 'smokescreen'.
2) I decide to know the guy and I realize he is not gay and but I slightly change my opinion to "all guys with earrings are gay, except my daughter's boyfriend" or...
3) I know the guy, I notice he is not gay using my daughter so I revisit my prejudice and start thinking that the use of earring may be a fashion statement related to a moment in time, the same way that most pirates used earrings (so it is not the first time in history that men used earrings) and I change my prejudice completely, still liking or not the use of earrings by men but not mixing it with sexual orientation.

As you can see each case means a different level of information and of open/closeness to new information.

But, again, I considered bias unavoidable, no matter who we are and what we do, and I would love to hear opinions on this matter.