SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay
Prejudice and Related Concepts
Growing up in today’s society as a gay male, I have personal experienced prejudice, stereotyping, bigotry, and discrimination. I want to discuss how these terms are associated within my life and give you examples of how they have affected me.SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay
Stereotypes in the gay community are everywhere and I probably get associated with at least one every day. One of the stereotypes I hate the most is when we are stereotyped as being weak or less superior to any other athlete. I have been playing spots since I was about three years old. I swam competitively for fourteen years including swimming for The Ohio State University and also have been playing Rugby for over nine years. When others hear that I play rugby I tend to get made fun of at first. “Rugby is a rough sport, how does a fag play rugby? Are you the water boy?”; That’s something that was just said to me in October. The name calling is something else that really gets to me. “Racist name calling usually involves blatant, ugly words that carry harshly negative connotation” (Koppelman, 2014, p.17). I feel that these stereotypes attacking gays in sports should be put to rest. Some of the best athletes are homosexuals like Kwame Harris from the Oakland Raiders, Orlando Cruz Puerto Rican Boxer, and Ian Thorp Olympic Gold medalist for swimming just to name a few. There are also over thirty LGBT Rugby teams in the United States today. I personally believe that rugby is one of the roughest sports around. There is still a huge stereotype that reaches all the way back to the historical era involving the views on homosexuality being a choice. It is proven now that homosexuality is as much as a choice as it is to choose your race. SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay
The second thing I wanted to discuss is discrimination. The biggest contributor to discrimination in the gay community believe it or not is the Red Cross. The Red Cross discriminates against the homosexual community by refusing the blood donation of any man having sex with another man. I feel that they are automatically assuming that because we are gay man they we have HIV and/ or diseased. “The FDA bans donations from men who have had sex with other men since 1977, saying there is an increased risk of exposure to and transmission of infectious diseases — including HIV — in male-to-male sexual encounters” (Ebrahimji, 2013). The ban is said not to be discriminatory on a donor’s sexual orientation, according to the FDA. The policy is based on the documented increased risk of transmissible infections. Statistically speaking African American males are the number one carrier of the virus. Red Cross is currently working on changing their laws. They have had the same rules and regulations for almost fifty years and with the new CEO they are starting to make changes. “The American Red cross believes all potential blood donors should be treated with fairness, equality and respect, and that accurate donor histories and medically supported donor referral criteria are critical to the continued safety of blood transfusions. “The FDA’s decision to take steps to recommend a change in the blood donation deferral for men who have had sex with men is still being processes” (Brown, 2014).
There are many benefits that we would have if society was free of prejudice. It seems the society has a chip on its should and people fear change. Also there is a huge competition between people who think they need to outdo everyone. Without prejudice there would be so much more peace, less riots and terrorism. Especially right now with the fear of cops being racist against black men could benefit without prejudice.
Pride and Prejudice: The Importance of Successful Marriage In today’s American society, marriage is mainly based on love and affection. This idea was introduced very early, but it is not always necessarily worth much. In Jane Austen’s novel pride and prejudice, she introduces various marriages of the 18th century. At the end of the novel, the reader believes that Austin supports the idea that marriage can succeed if it is based on the long-term love that is discovered through a thorough understanding of each other’s personality and intent.
In Jane Austen ‘s 1813 pride and prejudice, the culture of the 1800’ s centered on marriage, sex, and the rights of women. In the era of “arrogance and prejudice” wealth influences social exchanges and marriages. Pride and prejudice develop mainly with a conservative viewpoint on social life and gradually break up “needs and needs” into contingent occupation of modern marriage. Mrs Bennett is supporting her five daughters, so she is mainly concerned about the marriage of Bennett family.SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay
Pride and Prejudice: The Importance of Successful Marriage In today’s American society, marriage is mainly based on love and affection. This idea was introduced very early, but it is not always necessarily worth much. In Jane Austen’s novel pride and prejudice, she introduces various marriages of the 18th century. – Divorce is a difficult thing for all families and may destroy the lives of all participants, but life, love and family are not just relationships. People remarriage new relationships, new lives, and many times, they continue to form new families. However, remarriage presents the difficulties and challenges peculiar to the newlyweds couple and their new family members; these newly formed families have another possibility to fail in the background.
Among the pride and prejudice of Jane Austen’s pride and prejudice there are various marriages. These marriages also have different incentives. Comparing the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy with Lydia and Wick ham, Charlotte Lucas and Collins, readers began to know that the reasons for partner marriage are different. Readers can view their own opinions based on their priorities. If the reader wants to understand a financial security based marriage like Collins and Charlotte Lucas, if they do not accompany love, they have a prejudice about how this relationship will work It may be. The relationship forms a bias.
Love and marriage in England in the 19th century were closely related concepts. Jane Austen ‘s novel “Pride and Prejudice” is one of the most important treasures of life, centered on the importance of marriage as one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. As the title suggests, various social classes oppose pride and prejudice according to social moral and social expectations. Austin introduced readers to two main factors
The regulation of individuals’ social behavior is carried out through the system of individual attitudes. The forms of attitudes, stable and closed from the influence of new experience, are presented by stereotypes and prejudices. Their cognitive component contains distorted, irrational, absurd knowledge about objects that do not meet the changing reality. With respect to inanimate objects this refers, for example, to all sorts of superstitions, but in the social sphere, stereotypes and prejudices widely serve as the justification of racial, ethnic, class and economic differences. The significance of prejudices and stereotypes as an illusory, fantastic explanation of reality consists in the fact that they indirectly contribute to the preservation of social inequality and inhibit progressive change.
Prejudice and stereotypes as illusion
Stereotypes mean extremely stable and limited understanding of a social object or situation by which people are guided in their behavior without a second thought (Myers, 2012; Feenstra, 2013). A major role in the structure of a stereotype belongs to its emotional charge, which clearly indicates to what is acceptable and unacceptable in relation to any object. Thus, if an object of a stereotype is another person, the major features are often one’s gender, nationality, or profession, while other differences may be unduly ignored. According to Inzlicht and Schmader (2011), the specificity of this approach lies in the unconscious division of people into “us” and “them” with ingroup experiences perceived as idealized and endowed with pculiarities in a positive way (autostereotype), while outgroups are endowed with negative assessments (heterostereotype). As a result, stereotypes form a simplified and highly superficial understanding of the social reality phenomena.SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay
In its turn, the concept of prejudice includes irrational components of social and individual consciousness, based on the inaccurate, distorted, stereotypized knowledge that was accepted uncritically, with the negative emotional manifestations becoming intense (Myers, 2012; Feenstra, 2013). A person with a prejudice may not like those who are different and discriminate against them by one’s actions. Thus, while prejudice is a negative attitude, discrimination is a negative behavior. In general, basing on Myers (2012) and Inzlicht and Schmader (2011) studies, negative assessments as a measure of prejudice may be linked to the emotional associations, need to justify one’s discriminatory behavior or stable negative beliefs, i.e. stereotypes.Prejudices and stereotypes have several sources as they perform several functions. In particular, they can express a sense of one’s Self and the desire to seek affectation from the society; defend self-concept from anxiety caused by uncertainty about one’s own safety or internal conflict; as well as support group interests, values, and social status. Given the latter, in our opinion, one of the most important origins of prejudice and stereotypes is social inequality. It is difficult, for example, to disagree with Inzlicht and Schmader (2011) that stereotypical views about African Americans and women help to justify the lower social status of these groups. Indeed, prejudices basically help justify the economic and social superiority of those with wealth and power. Meanwhile, attitudes can easily match the social hierarchy not only because they justify it, but also because occurring discrimination affects those who become its victims, and so the social beliefs can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies, as Myers (2012) and Feenstra (2013) argue.
In addition, identifying ourselves with certain groups, we include social identification into the personal one (i.e. a sense of personal qualities and attitudes). As Myers (2012) marks, categorizing people into groups, we thus contrast our group to other groups (“they”) with a clear predisposition and manifestation of favoritism for our own groups. As a result, a sense of belonging (“we”-feeling) increases our self-concept and helps to achieve inner peace. We are looking for not only self-esteem, but also opportunities to be proud of our group. Moreover, the fact that we perceive our groups as different in the better way from the others contributes to the situation where we also tend to see ourselves in a more attractive light (Myers, 2012; Feenstra, 2013). On this basis, stereotypes successfully fix in the public mind, and conformism here plays an important role. Indeed, the shaped prejudices are kept up mainly by inertia, as Feenstra (2013) reasonably notes. If a prejudice is accepted by the society, the majority will prefer to take the path of least and will promote stereotypes not so much because of the need to hate someone as because of the desire to be accepted and valued by this society.In its essence, the underlying cause of stereotypes’ adoption is a non-developed cognitive component (Myers, 2012; Inzlicht & Schmader, 2011). In particular, explaining the actions of others, an individual often makes a fundamental attribution error: being inclined to attribute the behavior of people to their internal dispositions, one does not consider important situational forces (Feenstra, 2013). In addition, as Myers (2012) puts this, it is an attribution error that makes an individual biased in the interpretation of one’s own group members’ behavior as positive, whereas positive actions committed by the members of an out-group are usually not taken into account. In general, we sometimes make judgments or start communicating with someone having nothing but a stereotype at hand. In such cases, stereotypes and prejudice are able to fully deprive of objectivity and distort the interpretation and memories of people and environment.SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay Conclusion
The modern view of prejudice arising due to the recent studies leads us to an idea of how stereotypical thinking becomes a byproduct of information processing – a method individuals apply to simplify the perception of the world. However, the emergence of illusive relationships between the belonging to a certain social group and one’s behavior has both cognitive sources and cognitive consequences. Directing our interpretation and our memories, stereotypical thinking results in the fact that we find evidence in its favor, even where such evidence is not present at all. Therefore, stereotypes are resilient and difficult to modify. And yet, there are some reserve methods that can weaken them. Thus, if status inequality creates prejudice, the society should strive to create relationships where cooperation and social equality will dominate. In particular, if we know that some type of discrimination is based on prejudice, we need to get rid of discrimination, but depriving it of any institutional support. Generally, it is believed that the psychological and social health of a person is based on awareness of both one’s own individuality and uniqueness and group identity, as well as one’s belonging to all humanity.SOCI 2001 week 1 Assignment Essay