SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
When a person hears the word prejudice, he or she might think it only refers to the racial prejudice often found between those with light skin and those with dark skin. However, prejudice runs much deeper than a person’s color. Prejudice is found between gender, religion, cultural and geographical background, and race. People have discriminated against others based upon these attributes from the beginning of time. Prejudice has become a complex problem in our society today and much of our world’s history is based upon such hatred. In the 1600’s, white men used Africans as slaves and treated them as if they were not human. “Colored” people were not even allowed to use the same drinking fountains as white people until the mid-1900’s. Hitler and his men killed over five million people because they were Jewish or were not their definition of “normal.” The Ku Klux Klan exists today and openly professes its hatred towards Jews and colored people. Our society is riddled with such hatred based upon peoples’ beliefs and origins and it seems millions are fighting each other for no relevant reason at all.SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
I do believe that we can greatly reduce the amount of prejudice in our world today, yet I do not think that it will ever completely go away. Society has seemingly come to except all races, religions, and genders, and supposedly has achieved “political correctness,” yet there will forever be individuals who discriminate based upon these issues. These individuals often form large groups that recruit new members to enforce their hatred of those with a certain religion or skin tone. Obviously, no one can tell these people that they cannot have their own opinions or beliefs, for they have the right to hate whomever they like. However, I believe we need to raise our children to accept all people, no matter what god they do or do not believe in or what color skin they may have. If children are raised around people who are not the same as they are, then they will most likely not think anything different of people who do not look the same as them or believe what they believe. If we raise our children to believe all people are equal from the start, then prejudice will slowly disintegrate over time.
We, as the human race, need to focus on not judging people before we know them for who they are. Today, there are so many different people in this world that stereotypes are almost always incorrect, as many people choose not to be followers, but to be individuals. I know many white people who, if they see a young black male standing on the corner, wearing a certain type of clothing, will discern that he is in a gang and has intentions of hurting others. How could someone say such a thing when all they have seen is one’s appearance? The boy standing there could be a great student in school who helps others and plans to become someone important in the future. Asians, African-Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians, and all other ethnic groups need to look past each other’s physical attributes and start looking inside a person to see who they truly are. After all, personalities do not lie on the outside of one’s body, but in one’s mind.
I believe people need to stop “following the crowd” and form their own opinions. I am very sure that few members of the Ku Klux Klan originally felt as if whites are superior to all other races. They simply felt as if they would fit in better and would be more popular or on a higher level if they believed such ideas. As the Klan gained members, it became more powerful and an increasing number of people felt as if their lives would be improved if they joined the group. Parents and schools need to teach children that people need to have courtesy and kindness towards others, no matter what. People join these racist and religiously biased groups because they feel it will make their lives better, not caring about the others who will be affected by their hatred. Parents need to instill in their children the value of one treating others as they, themselves, would like to be treated truly are.
If everyone in this world had respect for one another, we would live in peace and be able to let others believe in what they wish and accept that everyone is different. I believe it all comes down to parents teaching their children right from wrong in our world and raising them in an environment that is centered around acceptance of different ways of life and cultures of people. If we all teach our children and change our ways, sometime in our future we will be closer to accepting that a man’s character is based upon the content of his soul, not his religion, gender, ethnicity, or the color of his skin.SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
As the dawn of the 21st century nears, racism‹the most important and persistent social problem in America and in the world today‹is on the rise in increasing ways. Whether we are talking about ethnic cleansings, group hatred or retraction of equity laws under the guise that these are unfair, the underlying issue is the same. One group, threatened by the perceived loss of power, exercises social, economic and political muscle against the Other to retain privilege by restructuring for social advantage. Such actions and efforts call for an understanding of the basic concepts of prejudice and racism, and how to lessen their destructive effect.
At the heart of prejudice lies two concepts: ignorance and fear. All of us tend to have prejudicial attitudes towards others. This type of prejudice or “pre-judgment” is based on ignorance. It is a normal human response to racial, social, sexual and other forms of differences, because all human beings tend to prejudge others on the basis of limited knowledge, especially if they are different from us. Thus we are all prejudiced, and virtually none are exempt. Most of what passes for prejudice in society is the result of ignorance of other groups and their way of life and social condition. Because of the way American society is presently structured, most Whites have almost no conceptual idea nor first-hand experience of life in the African American and Latino communities. This is because the prevailing norms of separation and segregation that prevent people of different racial/ethnic groups from interacting with each other in a meaningful and positive way, perpetuate this ignorance of groups, which in turn gives rise to attitudes of prejudice. In light of such a common human condition, the advice of a former seminary professor of mine is most helpful and worthy of practice: “The mark of a mature mind is the ability to suspend judgment until all the evidence is in.”
The other factor is fear, and this one goes much deeper than ignorance, for its strikes at the root of prejudice, the issue of privilege and power. What makes racial prejudice so sinister is not just the act of prejudging a person or a group. Prejudice is an inflexible, rational attitude that, often in a disguised manner, defends privilege, and even after evidence to the contrary will not change, so that the post-judgment is the same as the pre-judgment.. In the definition of prejudice, the indictment is greater for post-judgment than for pre-judgment. If you don¹t have post-judgment in your definition of prejudice you don¹t know what you are talking about. This is because racial prejudice is the refusal to change one’s attitude even after evidence to the contrary, so that one will continue to post-judge people the same way one pre-judged them. This is the due to the fear of losing the power of privilege. In prejudice people are basically defending privilege of position and thus stand to gain emotionally, culturally, socially and economically from an attitude of prejudice towards others. Whenever people sense that these privileges are threatened they become fearful of the Other and react. The old adage applies here: “A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.” Prejudice thus becomes the mental framework to protect from fear, thereby safeguarding a position of social advantage and privilege over others defined as different, and therefore, undeserving. People find great social and economical benefit from being prejudiced. And as long as these gains are forthcoming, people will continue to maintain their prejudice, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, for prejudice is more visceral than cerebral.
Prejudice operates on three levels:
1. The Cognitive Level‹What people believe about others, their stereotypes. Stereotypes are a set of exaggerated and inaccurate generalizations about a group or category of people that is either favorable or unfavorable, which are often emotionally toned and not susceptible of modification through empirical evidence. These generalizations are maintained because they are a shared belief receiving strong support from one’s reference groups. Stereotypes are the social scripts we have in our heads about others and the roles we believe they should play in our socially constructed world.
2. The Emotional Level‹The feelings that the Other arouses in an individual. These may be negative feelings of fear, dread, caution, fight or flight; or positive feelings of joy, solidarity, and we-ness, depending on how the Other is viewed. The deep well out of which these feelings rise is filled with early memories of encounters with others or with behaviors and beliefs we were socialized, which surge to the surface when the Other is encountered. The emotional level is the most important level because even after the cognitive level has been challenged and undermined, we still hang on to prejudice at the emotional or affective level because of the psychological need it fulfills‹the need to feel superior, which in actuality is a state of inferiority. Much of this can be attributed to an educational system in this country that has deprived most White Americans of their ethnic heritage, by touting the experience of one group‹the English‹as the norm for all. Thus, Nathan McCall is correct when he declares that “the education system in this country has failed white people more than it¹s failed anybody else. It has crippled them and limited their humanity. They¹re the ones who need to know the most about everybody because they¹re the ones running the country. They¹ve been taught so little about anybody other than white people that they can¹t understand, even when they try.” When Whites see persons of color expressing pride in their heritage there is a sense of estrangement because they cannot do the same except in some generic “American” heritage. The result is an attack on multiculturalism and the need for a sense of psychological superiority expressed in prejudice at the affective level.SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
3. The Behavioral Level‹The tendency to engage in discriminatory behavior. Discrimination is the unequal treatment of individuals or groups on the basis of some, usually categorical, attribute, such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, age, or social class membership. Prejudice is an attitude, however. When it results in an action, it becomes discrimination. Both together form the basis for racism. Prejudice is an attitudinal bias, while discrimination is a behavioral bias.
The privilege that prejudice rationally defends is a product of racism. Racism, however, is more than just prejudice and discrimination combined. Racism is a socially constructed reality at the heart of society¹s structures. Racism is the deliberate structuring of privilege by means of an objective, differential and unequal treatment of people, for the purpose of social advantage over scarce resources, resulting in an ideology of supremacy which justifies power of position by placing a negative meaning on perceived or actual biological/cultural differences. Racism and prejudice are not mental illnesses or psychological problems people have. Neither are they the product of “psychological abnormalities.” Both are rational, cultural and structural phenomena to defend power. Racism goes beyond prejudice (an attitude) to structure this power advantage politically, economically, culturally and religiously within a social system, whether it be simple (as in personal bias) or complex (as in the role apartheid played in South Africa), which gives social advantage to some at the expense of others perceived to be inferior and undeserving.
In its essence, racism is culturally sanctioned strategies that defend the advantages of power, privilege and prestige which “Whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities.” This deliberate political, economical, religious and sociocultural structuring of privilege, does not take place in some moral vacuum. It has behind it the moral force of an ideology of supremacy, an ill-will that claims racial superiority and pride of position. By ideology I mean a system of ideas and beliefs about the universe, to which a people adhere in order to justify their attitudes and actions. This ideology can have a religious or a scientific basis, depending on which one shapes our worldview. Nevertheless the outcome is the same, where one group benefits and the other does not.
Ever since the European restructuring of the world from the 16th century on, racism has become affirmative action for whites. It is both an attitude and an act of structural superiority, which justifies its very existence by giving biological differences, such as skin color, texture of the hair, physical features; or cultural differences such as language, religion, ethnicity, or accent, a negative value and meaning. This negative meaning then legitimizes treating the Other as inferior to oneself or ones group. The result is an objective (visible, measurable, tangible), differential (there is an obvious difference between groups), and unequal treatment (the difference in treatment is not the same), where one groups gets consistently short-changed. The working definition for both racism and sexism is the same. Both refer to evil perpetrated against others. The only difference is that in racism color is the excuse for oppression, while in sexism it is gender. But racism has very little to do with color, just like sexism has little to do with sex or gender. Biological differences are not the problem; they are merely the excuse for oppression. Let me illustrate.
No person of color has ever suffered discrimination because of the color of their skin. If color were the problem then the solution would be to change your skin color, an action which persons of color throughout history have often attempted, because of the wrong assumption that the problem was the color of their skin. Yet, the problem is not skin color, but systems that perpetrate evil against others and then justify that evil by blaming the victims. There is nothing wrong with the color black, brown or yellow. It is not skin color that forms the basis for discrimination, but the negative meaning given to the color of skin. “Color is neutral; it is the mind that gives it meaning.” Neither are women discriminated against because of their gender. If gender were the problem then the solution would also be to have a sex-change operation. But the problem is not gender but systems which benefit men at the expense of women and then justify the evil perpetrated by putting the blame on gender. Women are discriminated against because of the negative meaning given to their gender. It is not our gender or skin color that we have to change, but systems of oppression that benefit some groups at the expense of others. This whole process is what William Ryan calls “blaming the victim.” It is an ideological process that justifies inequality by finding defects in the victims of inequality. The logical outcome of analyzing social problems in terms of the deficiencies of the victim is a simple formula for action: Change the victim! SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
William I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, who are numbered among the founders of American sociology, enunciated a most important concept in 1928, “the definition of the situation”‹the Thomas Theorem‹also known as “the self-fulfilling prophecy.” “If a situation is defined as real, it is real in its consequences.” Thus how one defines a situation depends on how one perceives it. For example, the congestion in an elevator or crowded subway is called “intimacy” at a party. This theorem has far-reaching implications for an understanding of race relations as well as the role of women in the church and in society, for “all social reality is defined, [and] power comes from the ability to control the definition of situations.” For example, if women are regarded as emotional, concerned only with domestic matters and immediate concerns, and incapable of achieving leadership positions because of a lack of leadership skills, the consequence is that they are not given adequate occupational opportunities. They end up being relegated to secondary roles, thereby making true in reality the definition enunciated. It also holds true in race relations. If African Americans and Latinos are defined as lazy, incompetent, unintelligent, culturally deficient and lacking leadership skills, they too will be relegated to a secondary status in society and not given the opportunity to advance, resulting in consequences which are real thereby justifying the original definition of their situation.
Thus the meaning that people give to their reality, whether or not true, causes people to behave in a manner that makes the original meaning actually come true. “A man pretending to have a gun can order his victims around just as effectively as if he really had one, provided that they believe he does.”
What this means is that as human beings we have the capacity of giving meaning to the world around us. None of us sees the world exactly as it is, for the reality that we see is literally an invention of the brain, actively constructed from a constantly changing flood of information we take into our minds, which is then interpreted through our experiences. The fact that two people looking at the same object do not see the same thing is a result of two different types of vision‹the “visual field” in the eye and the “visual world” in the brain. The visual field is made up of the light, colors and figures recorded by the retina. The visual world is made up of all the sociocultural experiences stored in the mind that define the image in the retina, giving it an interpretive meaning called “perception.” Though the image is in the eye, perception is in the mind. What people actually “see” is not the reality of the image, but the reality of the perception. Thus, American writer, Anais Nin (1903-1977) is correct when she says: “We don¹t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Perception is reality! And however one defines the world, that is how it will be.
Take a piece of cloth such as a handkerchief. What is the function of a handkerchief? To wipe off sweat, clean our hands, wipe our mouth, blow our nose‹all menial tasks. Is the meaning of these functions in the cloth? No. It is in culture, in our human society which has taught us to view and regard a handkerchief in this way. You can take the same piece of cloth and make it into a shirt or a blouse and give it the functions of both protecting and celebrating our bodies. You can also take this same piece of cloth, add some red, some blue and some stars and turn it into a flag, and it becomes the signature of a people, symbolizing their group identity and nationality. And many are willing to die and kill for it, and others to stand at attention with tears in their eyes in a moment of triumph, like the many athletes at the Olympic Games as their national flag is raised in celebrated honor of their world-record victories. Consider Karch Kiraly, Captain of the United States Olympic volleyball team, which won the gold medal in both the 1984 and 1988 games, and who was been designated “The World’s Best Volleyball Player” by the International Volleyball Federation. After the team won the gold medal at the 1984 games in Los Angeles, Kiraly declared: “I don’t remember much about the last match for the gold in Los Angeles, and I don’t remember the medal being put around my neck, but I’ll never forget singing‹screaming‹the anthem as our flag went up just a little higher than the others.” Over what? Over a mere piece of colored cloth! Not just any cloth, however, but a cloth imbued with meaning, significance and national symbolism and in which we invest emotions that bring spin-tingling sensations in moments of victory or patriotism, or outrage when desecrated, such as the 1989 political flap over the burning of the American flag.
The problem is that for too long in American society we have been placing meaning not just on cloth, but on the perception of physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, gender, age, sexual orientation; or on social differences such as religion, ethnicity, language and social class. We have relegated some people to be the handkerchiefs of life, and others to be the blouses and shirts, all the while securing a prominent place for those whom we chose to celebrate as flags. We even publish magazines and sleaze newspapers so that we can keep up with the daily life of our favorite human flags.
I submit to you that the United States is not only a multicultural nation, but also a nation in conflict with its values, values of freedom, equality, liberty and justice for all. For the meaning is not in the cloth, the meaning is not in the gender, the meaning is not in the hair, the meaning is not in the color of the skin nor in the ethnic origin or language of a people, nor in the sexual orientation; the meaning is in the culture and in the socioreligious values transmitted from one generation to the next. It is this negative meaning, based on a system of beliefs that one group is superior to another group, that forms the basis for attitudes of prejudice and actions of discrimination, which result in racism‹the social construction of power‹both in society and in the church.SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
The importance of all of this to society is that we often treat others, especially those who differ from us whether by race, class or gender, as below us and regard them as handkerchiefs, as menial and insignificant; while we regard others, our colleagues and friends, as shirts and blouses; and still others, such as leaders and those in positions of power, as flags before whom we do obeisance and pay our due respect.
What we have in American society is the problem of a homogeneous value system operating within a heterogeneous society. It is the problem of maintaining stereotypes and actions of discrimination which dehumanize, and in many ways make less of human beings. Yet, if we are good enough for God, we ought to be good enough for each other. Being a “world citizen”‹a transcending person who knows no boundaries‹begins with compassion, love-action that gives a positive meaning and sense of worth to all human beings, resulting in our treating each other as the beautiful human flags that we all are.
The Issue is Power: Both Material and Moral:
Racism, however, is more than an ideology, a belief system or a negative attitude towards others arising out of prejudice. If that alone were the case, then racism would be “reduced to something which takes place inside human heads, and the implicit presupposition here is that a change of attitude which will put an end to racial oppression can be brought about by dialogue, by an ethical appeal for a change of mentality.” But such an understanding ignores the real factor behind racism (as well as sexism) Power! Racism‹and sexism‹are not about color or gender; they are about Power! They can thus afflict anyone of any gender, color, community, culture, or country, who craves power above the need to respect the Other. At the heart of racism (as well as sexism) lies the concept of group competition‹the quest for power.
What is power? Power in its essence is the capacity to act.. Sociologically, power comes in two forms, as coercive and as choice. In its coercive form it is the capacity to act in a manner that influences the behavior of others even against their wishes. This is material power, the most prevalent and destructive form of power in society today, and appeals to the baser qualities of human beings, because of competition over scarce resources. Power as choice, on the other hand, is the capacity to act in a manner that influences the behavior of others without violating free moral choice. This is moral power, which appeals to the higher faculties of humankind. This type of power gives rise to true power. “True power is knowing that you can, but you don¹t.” To practice this form of power is the height of self-control. Once one understands that racism at its core has to do with power, one will then recognize that at the root of racism lie two important elements‹the material and moral basis of oppression.
The Material Base of Oppression: Racism is more than just a meaning system, a reinterpretation of reality; it is also a material system, economically and politically structured, from which this meaning system emerges. In order to grasp the significance of this, one needs to understand a basic premise of sociology, that no single institution in society can be understood in isola-tion from the larger society of which it is a part. This is because institutions do not exist in a social vacuum, but are social-historical entities influencing and at the same time being influenced by their socio-cultural milieu. Indi-viduals and institutions, in many ways, are products of the larger soci-ety of which they are a part. And the reciprocal influence of the one upon the other, often goes unnoticed to human observation, but it is there nonetheless. Therefore it is helpful to visualize the reciprocal relationship between the individual, roles, institution, society and its undergirding culture, for each one shapes the other.SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice
Individuals are shaped and in turn shape the roles they play, which are formed by the institutions in which the roles are played out. Institutions in turn are shaped by the needs of society as well as give structure to that society, which shapes individuals as well as is influenced by those individuals that comprise society. This entire process of reciprocal exchange is largely influenced by the specific culture of a given society. Culture influences who we are as individuals and the different roles different individuals are permitted to play within which institutions, and in what way these shape society, which in turn shapes individuals and vice versa. It is in culture where both prejudice and racism reside. These forces and power arrangements shape people¹s lives as well as the roles and institutions within society, resulting in exclusive structures and society. Culture is the key factor, for as Shirley Teper declares:
Culture is called a habit system in which “truths” that have been perpetuated by a group over centuries have permeated the unconscious. This basic belief system, from which “rational” conclusions spring, may be so deeply ingrained that it becomes indistinguishable from human perception‹the way one sees, feels, believes, knows. It is the continuity of cultural assumptions and patterns that gives order to one’s world, reduces an infinite variety of options to a manageable stream of beliefs, gives a person a firm footing in time and space, and binds the lone individual to the communality of a group.
Thus, culture impacts all aspects of this reciprocal process of social influence, which process is prevalent in all human societies.
Throughout human history racism has expressed itself in the socio-economic exploitation of God’s dark-skinned children, which exploitation has been justified by biological-cultural differences, when the real reasons were economic as a result of group competition. This material basis of exploitation is the principle reason behind the White domination of the darker races and the limitation of their access to power, which has resulted in an objective or visible, differential and unequal treatment.
In 1903 W. B. E. DuBois, the great African American writer and sociologist, declared in his book, The Souls of Black Folk, that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line‹the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.” Fifty years later, however, he altered his views with the realization that the real problems were economic. “Today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements its: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen.”SOCI 2001 wk 2 Assignment Understanding Prejudice