Prejudice & Discrimination

Prejudice• Latin praejūdicium a “preceding judgment,

disadvantage”• Literal definition misleading, why? • Prejudice often arises after groups come into

contact and had some knowledge of one another• Wirth “an attitude with an emotional bias”• Because feelings shape our attitudes they reduce

our receptivity to additional information that may alter those attitudes.

Resistant to Rational Influence• Ralph Rosnow: to

encompass “any unreasonable attitude that is usually resistant to rational influence.”

• Working Definition: “Negative beliefs, feelings, and action-orientations regarding a certain group or groups of peoples

Example Dialogue • Mr. X: The trouble with the Jews is they only take care of

their own group. • Mr. Y: But the community Chest campaign shows that they

gave more generously in proportion to their numbers, to the general charities of the community, than did the nonjews.

• Mr. X: That shows they are always trying to buy favor and intrude into Christian affairs. They think of nothing but money; that is why there are so many Jewish bankers.

• Mr. Y: But a recent study shows that the percentage of Jews in the banking business is negligible, far smaller than the percentage of non-Jews.

• MR. S: That’s just it, they don’t go for respectable business; they are only in the movie business or run night clubs.

U.S. Propaganda

Nazi Depictions of Jewish people

Discrimination• The actual

behavior, the practice of differential and unequal treatment of other groups of people, usually along racial, religious, or ethnic lines.

• Latin discriminatus “to divide or distiguish”

De facto and De Jure segregation

• De facto “in practice” segregation that becomes embedded in social customs and institutions– The Segregation of the

Milwaukee Nightlife

• De Jure Segregation - “by law” segregation that is licensed by law– Jim Crowe in the South,

and the Slave Codes

Institutional DiscriminationThe unequal treatment of subordinate groups inherent in

the ongoing operations of societies institutions.

Entrenched in customs, laws, and practices

Examples, banking rejecting minority mortgage applications

criminal sentencing inequities in the criminal justice system

higher unemployment of minorities

Psychology of Prejudice• Three Levels, Cognitive, emotional

and action orientation• Cognitive: encompasses a person’s

beliefs and perceptions of a group as threatening, nonthreatening, unequal or equal

• In many societies, members of the majority group may believe that a particular low-status group is dirty immoral violent or law breaking.

Cognitive Level

• Thomas Jefferson On Slavery, from Notes on Virginia

Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia• They seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour

through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present..- When present, they do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them.

Emotional Level

• The emotional level represents a more intense stage of personal involvement. The emotional attitudes may be negative or positive, such as fear/envy, distrust/trust, disgust/admiration, or contempt/empathy.

• George Wallace “Segregation Forever Speech”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLLDn7MjbF0

Action-Orientation• positive or negative predisposition of group leads

an individual to act• Leads to ethnoviolence, acts of violence

members of disliked groups– Hate crimes such as lynchings

Self Justification

• Involves denigrating a person or group to justify maltreatment of them.

• We are not rational creatures, but rationalizing creatures!

• We require reassurance that the things we do and the lives we live are proper and that good reasons for our actions exist.

Causes for Prejudice

• Authoritarian Personality– Individual received harsh

treatment from parents as a child

– love withheld if the child does not respond with weakness and submission

– Demonstrate displaced aggression directing their hostility against a powerless group to compensate for their feelings of insecurity and fear

Frustration

• a result of a lack of resources or rewards, in one’s standard of living in comparison with social norms.

• Frustrated people seek to strike out against the perceived cause of their deprivation.

• Often times they can’t against the true source, and target powerless minority groups instead.

Scapegoating• Blaming others for

something that is not their fault

• 1. highly visible in physical appearance

• 2 not strong enough to strike back

• 3. situated within easy access of the dominant group

• 4. a past target of hostility for whom latent hostility still exists

• 5. The symbol of an unpopular concept

Ethnophaulisms

– A derogatory word or expression used to describe a racial or ethnic group

– This is the language of prejudice,

– the verbal picture of a negative stereotype that reflects the prejudice and bigotry of a society’s past and present.

– Majority and minority groups both use ethnophaulisms to degrade outsiders

– Emotional power of such labels has the effect of reducing people to a less-than human abstraction.

Three Types

• 1. Disparaging Names (chink, dago polack, honky)

• 2. Alleged Physical Characteristics or foods (darky, potato eater, frogs)

• 3. Alleged Behaviors- “Jew him down”, “Indian giver” Vincent Van Gough’s Potato

Eaters

Power of Stereotypes

• These types of stereotypical images are deeply ambivalent - they are both comforting and threatening to the white observer.

• they provide a series of convenient roles for the white representation of black people. All of them play into white fantasies of moral, spiritual and mental superiority.

• These stereotypes are replicated in contemporary contexts

The ‘Uncle Tom’• Humiliatingly subservient,

loyal but stupid• Childlike, unthinking and

fearful• The ‘good servant’• In some African American

communities "Uncle Tom" is a slur used to disparage a Black person who is humiliatingly subservient or deferential to White people.

The ‘Coon’ Caricature• Derived from raccoon,

depicts Black men as a lazy man-child.

• The Coon defends slavery, he is to blame for his position.

The ‘Pickaninny’ caricature. • Pickaninnies portrayed with

bulging eyes, wild hair, red lips, and wide mouths into which they stuffed huge slices of watermelon.

• routinely shown on postcards, posters, and matchboxes being chased or eaten

• portrayed as buffoons often running from alligators and toward fried chicken.

Pikaninny

Uncle Remus

• harmless, friendly stereotype, given to 'quaint, naive and comic philosophising'

The ‘Mammy’• The Mammy is

nurturing and protective of "her" white family, while neglecting her own children.

• Self-sacrificing, fat, asexual, good-humored, a loyal cook and housekeeper

• Defense of slavery, the Mammy liked her position, preferred her white family over her own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ7r2OVu1ss

Mammy

‘The Brute’

• Portrays Black men as savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal

• Black men are depicted as hideous, terrifying predators who target helpless victims, generally white women

• "A bad negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless." (Charles Smith 1897)

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynCku4c01VE&feature=related

The ‘Jezebel’• Promiscuous and

predatory.• seductive, alluring, worldly,

beguiling, tempting, and lewd.

• Used during slavery as a rationalization for sexual relations between White slave owners and Black female slaves.