Prejudice and Discrimination

 

Prejudice is anegative attitude based on faulty generalizations about members of selectedracial and ethnic groups.

 

Stereotypes areovergeneralizations about the appearance, behavior, or other characteristics ofall members of a category.

 

We hear these terms in the news a lot as well.  Although many of us may feel that weare not prejudiced or do not carry stereotypes about categories of people, most of us do.  They were often part of our social upbringing.

 

Some stereotypesthat we may have might include our perceptions of people who are gay, rich,Muslim, wife-beaters (batterers), and alcoholics. 

 

STOP and think for a minute!

 

As you were reading the categories of people I justlistedÉdid images pop into your head at allÉpossibly exaggerations that you sawin the media or funny incidents you may have encountered, possibly somenot-so-funny incidents?

 

These represent the stereotypes that you carry with you.  All of us have them. Remember also that stereotypes can be positive.  By this I mean that we can carrypositive stereotypes about people such as "blacks have more rhythm anddance better" or "Chinese students are better at Math".  These can be just as harmful andcertainly interfere with our accurate perceptions of others.

 

Prejudice occurswhen we find out that a person is a member of a category for which we have a stereotypedimage.  Let us say that you have a strong image of what rich peopleare like and then you find out that a person you know is very, very wealthy.  You may assume that some of what youassume is characteristic of rich people also applies to them.

 

Discrimination isdefined as actions or practices of dominant group members that have a harmfulimpact on members of a subordinate group.

 

Having discussed with you that many individuals carry a lestsome stereotypes around in their head and may even be prejudiced in theirassumption that they are accurateÉthe real problem enters when we actuallytreat people according to our prejudices rather than reality.

 

Sometimes we can engage in Individual Discrimination where we treat a particular individual differentlybased on our stereotypes. 

 

Sometimes an institutions or organization can engage in InstitutionalDiscrimination when the day to dayoperations of a business have an harmful impact on a subordinate group. 

 

Institutional Discrimination is often times hard to identify. Let's look at KVCC for an example!

 

In the nursing program there are very few malestudents.  In fact, there are veryfew male students in any of the allied health programs.  Conversely, there are many more malesin the electrical and line-worker programs than there are women.

 

Now, one can argue that the principle reason for this difference is based on gender-roleand gender-work expectations in our society.  However, a good sociologist would also explore whether ornot the institution was participating in any practices that might contributethese numbers.  Let's look at somepossibilities.

 

(I'm making this stuff up so don't assume that theseactivities are actually going on here at KVCC!)

 

Consider what may happen if the faculty and staffresponsible for recruiting new nursing students hung posters at the daycaresand shopping malls in the area. I'm not sure what the statistics are but it may be that these locationswould be more likely to be noticed by women than men since they spend more timein these locations than men do.

 

Now consider that the faculty and staff responsible forrecruiting students to the line worker program contact all the teachers ofindustrial arts at local highs schools. Again, IÕm not sure about the statistics but would the students takingindustrial arts in high school be mostly men?  (I might be reflecting my own prejudices here!)

 

This saidÉpolicy makers have tried to provide incentives tocompanies and schools to be more fair and ultimately reduce the incidence ofinstitutional discrimination (it is nearly impossible to legislate individualdiscrimination).

 

Laws that have come to be knows collectively as AffirmativeAction and the advertising of companieshiring policies as providing equal opportunity reflect this move towards fairness.

 

Affirmative Actionconcluded that if you look at a school or a company in a particular geographicarea and then recorded demographic information from the area, the demographicsof the employees or students should match the area.

 

For example:  Ifa small city in Maine consisted of 52% women, 32% blacks, 12% Hispanics, 10%Muslims, etc. etc. then the composition of the local college student populationshould reflect similar numbers. (52% of the students should be women, etc. etc.)

 

This is where the concept of quotas came into being.  Administrators monitoring their numbers compared to thelocal demographics were sometimes forced to hire possibly less qualifiedindividuals who helped them approximate the demographics.  Some wonder if the time has come to setaside the laws of Affirmative Action and begin to look at the problem from another point of view.

 

Some assume that the root of all discrimination is at theindividual level.  Policy makers,hiring professionals, owners of businesses will conduct their business in someways which reflect their personal views on equality and equal opportunity.

 

Efforts such as the "Jigsaw Classroom" techniqueare targeted at younger people and emphasize cooperative learning among variousgroups as a way to teach principles contradictory to discrimination.

 

I am of the opinion that it is not enough to learn the waysand cultures of various ethnic and racial groupsÉwe need to have theopportunity to interact with and work with various individuals in acooperative, mutually dependent manner if we are to overcome our discriminatoryways.

 

(These practices may not remove the incidence of prejudice,but they may reduce the incidence of discrimination.)