SOCIOLOGY CHAPTER 9 SECTION 3 THEORIES OF PREJUDICE

SOCIOLOGY CHAPTER 9 SECTION 3: THEORIES OF PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION

• Individuals hold prejudices of many types. – Prejudice- widely held negative attitudes toward a group (minority or majority) and its individual members. – Prejudice attitudes are based on strong emotions, so they are often difficult to change.

• Racism is an extreme form of prejudice, because if not only involves judging people unfairly, but it assumes that a person’s own race or ethnic group is superior. • Racists believe that discrimination or exclusion is morally justified because of their own natural superiority.

HOW IS DISCRIMINATION DIFFERENT FROM PREJUDICE? • While prejudice involves holding biased opinions, discrimination involves acting upon those opinions by treating people unfairly.

• Discrimination takes many forms including… – Avoiding social contact with members of minority groups – Denying them positions that carry authority – Blocking their access to the more exclusive neighborhoods – Attacking or killing minority members

HATE CRIMES • In 1998, James Byrd Jr. , an African American from Texas, was chained to a pickup truck, then dragged to death. • That same year saw Matthew Shepard, a gay college student tied to a fence and beaten to death.

HOW ARE HATE CRIMES DIFFERENT? • Hate crimes involve bias related to race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or ancestry.

HOW DOES SOCIOLOGY INTERPRET HATE CRIMES? • Functionalists might notice that members of a group are bolstering their sense of unity against a common enemy. – Example: immigrants

STEREOTYPES • A stereotype is a set of ideas based on distortion, exaggeration, and oversimplification that is applied to all members of a group.

THE FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE • In studying prejudice and discrimination, functionalists focus on the dysfunctions caused by these practices. • The safety and stability of the larger society are at risk, because violence periodically erupts between groups.

THE CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE • According to conflict theory, a majority uses prejudice and discrimination as weapons of power to control a minority. • In conflict perspective, despite being common targets, different minorities tend to view one another as competitors rather than allies in their struggle against the minority.

THE SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE • According to the symbolic interactionist perspective, members of a society learn to be prejudice in much the same way they learn to be patriotic.

• In the pre-generalized learning period, children may overhear parents make racist or prejudice statements, they have not yet learned to separate people by race or ethnic group. • By the time children reach the total rejection stage, they are able to use physical clues to sort people into groups.

• Symbolic interactionism underlies the concept of the selffulfilling prophecy- an expectation that leads to behavior that then causes the expectation to become a reality.