"Something like this" happens all the time. Often, you find yourself in a situation where you're surrounded by people who view reality differently than you. If this comes to everyone's attention, then group social dynamics can come into play, where individual views of reality can be challenged by the pressure of a mob.
Most of the time, people just shrug it off, go home or back to their usual community and dismiss this as an aberration. If you are in jail for a crime you did not commit, you face this every day.
Racial prejudice is still a pressure like this. People who live in cosmopolitan areas can go home and shrug it off. People who are isolated and marked as different cannot, so they can see it more clearly. In either case, such prejudices are still with us, but since they've been driven underground, it's hard to know how to deal with them.
Most of the time, people just shrug it off, go home or back to their usual community and dismiss this as an aberration. If you are in jail for a crime you did not commit, you face this every day.
Racial prejudice is still a pressure like this. People who live in cosmopolitan areas can go home and shrug it off. People who are isolated and marked as different cannot, so they can see it more clearly. In either case, such prejudices are still with us, but since they've been driven underground, it's hard to know how to deal with them.