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The effects of prejudice and discrimination in society
Affects of prejudice and stereotyping
The effects of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination
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Thinking about diversity and all it encompasses can be overwhelming, to put it simply it is the differences between people. Often we see diversity as a skin color or gender but there is so much more to it. While those things are part of diverse people, it can also include religion, age, income, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, ect. All of the diverse traits can influence how the world treats a person. We see diversity as an important and valuable aspect of society, but not all people agree with us. There is prejudice, stereotypes, bigotry, oppression, and privilege in our world. Prejudices and stereotypes are closely linked. Stereotypes are generally believed concepts about a group of people. Prejudices are one person’s or group’s opinion about a person based on the group they belong to. Both of these can negatively impact people in often sexist, racist, or homophobic ways. …show more content…
It also makes it more difficult for diverse peoples to interact because they think they know about each other, when really all they know is untrue.
Every person is different and one label will not be able to classify every person with that specific trait. People who hold stereotypes to be true are often very prejudice and are seen as bigots. Bigotry is when a person is unwilling to hear someone else’s opinions. They are hateful towards people with different beliefs. This encourages a system of oppression and privilege. Oppression and privilege are both ways to treat a person unfairly. Oppression is unfavorable treatment. The majority of people use their power/privilege to control the minority. Privilege is favorited treatment, or the ones in control. There are many different forms of privilege or oppression, such as but not limited to men or women, whites or blacks, and heterosexual or LGBT+
people. One of the most memorable acts of discrimination that I have faced was coming out as a lesbian in my church. When they found out, I was told that I was no longer welcomed there. It was a difficult time for me. I felt hurt that people I thought cared about me would throw me out. I felt angry and betrayed. I was more scared that my family would also throw me out now that our church knew. I couldn’t help but think that I had done something wrong, when I hadn’t. I moved on and found comfort in new places with new people. People that were loving and welcoming. I learned that I needed to do what was right for me, I could find people that would accept me. I could not pretend to be the person the church wanted me to be. This awful experience helped me find the strength within myself. I would like to say my feeling about this have been resolved, but I am still working through it. I have not returned to a church or had any religious faith in my life since the incident. I am more confident in who I am now, but I still have more to learn until I reconnect and decide how to move on from that. Just as I felt discrimination, others may feel it on a daily basis. Some of these people are women, African Americans, Hispanics, LGBT+ people, and disabled. Discrimination has a huge impact on society. In Michigan about 15% of the population is African American, but 60% of people in prison are African American. That’s an outrageous percentage, and there may be some discrimination behind the statistics. Racial profiling is a form of oppression. Law enforcement target people based on their race or ethnicity, expecting one group of people to be more inclined to commit a crime than another. White privilege ties into racial profiling. Just because a person is white they are seen as less of a threat than a person of color. Gang affiliation, violence and poverty also impact this statistic. Most of this contribution has to do with stereotypes. Gangs and violence go hand in hand, and a stereotypical gang member is a black male. In areas of poverty there is more gang violence, and a large number of African Americans do live in poverty. Intolerance needs to be challenged. We are all the same on the inside, and I have struggled to understand how the color of our skin, and the different beliefs we hold can cause so much hatred. I believe that education can have an enormous influence on diversity. As adults grow older, the beliefs they hold become more concrete. If they were exposed to different cultures and beliefs at a young age, they will be more accepting as adults. It is harder for adults to grasp new concepts such as language skills, it only seems reasonable that it would be harder to grasp the concept of a new religion or culture as well. This is not excusing adults for their bigotry, as they should know better, but urging exposure to new things early and continuing on in life with that person. I also believe that people in the majority who share beliefs with the minority should stand with them. I believe in diversity. I believe that people can chose their own religion, beliefs, language, appearance, and should not be judged only on these things. As a white person I experience white privilege, and some of its perks. I feel like I can use this to help others by supporting them, and standing up for what is right. It can be scary sometimes, especially when it means protesting or trying to make a drastic change, but if enough people stand together change will come. I want to be a part of the change. I want to be on the right side of history. I took this class wanting to gain more knowledge about diversity. We are in a time where racial equality, gender equality, and human rights are more important than ever. Our generation will hopefully be the generation to see a huge leap in equality for all. I think that this class has built on the knowledge I already had. The issues that are currently influencing the US need to be acknowledged and this class has taught me more about the minority oppression. I feel more motivated and prepared to confront intolerance and promote welcoming diversity after this class. I thought of myself as a person who valued diversity before. I learned that most of the diversity that I had valued was what I had been exposed to. This class opened my eyes to other diverse people, and helped me get rid of some prejudice and stereotypes that I had. Because of this I realized that not all prejudice and stereotypes are meant to be hurtful. The Single Story Ted Talk and the I’m Not Your Inspiration Ted Talk explained this best for me, as I held similar assumptions to the ones in both videos. I have learned that each person should be experienced as an individual. Everyone has their own story, and usually it is nothing that you would guess from looking at them. I now understand diversity and think it is important to value and learn for those who are different than you. Developing a scale for diversity seems difficult because there will always be more to know. There is no way that I could absorb all cultures, religions, and experiences that the world offers. If it were like a ten-point scale with one being no diversity and ten being all the diversity I would say at the beginning of the class I was a five. I didn’t understand the full concept of diversity, but I did enjoy learning about different people, which is why I took this class. I would say that now I am a seven and a half. I would like to live a more diverse life, but there aren’t many options for it where I live. I definitely better understand what diversity means, and I stand strong in my belief that we all deserve equality. I have always wanted to travel, and this class has encouraged that. I really hope to travel to places all over the world to learn about and experience the different cultures, not just as a tourist but to get a real feel for life there.
A stereotype is an exaggerated generalization used to describe a group of people. Discrimination is the unequal treatment of different categories of people. An example of a stereotype would be the generalization that a majority of African American youth are gangbangers or criminals. An example of discrimination would be the mocking of an Asian student’s accent each time they spoke in class. Stereotyping and discrimination still take place today whether in minority communities or in the communities of those who hold the majority, though these incidents are not as prevalent in non minority
Our book opens us up to the world of diversity and inequality in the United States. It presses on issues about groups that hold superiority towards inferior groups for multiple reasons. In “Imagine our country” our book blatantly calls out America’s problems and how we in some cases are only increasing the chances of them continuing. It helps define the differences between racism and discrimination, which I never thought about enough to distinguish before taking this class. These chapters also offer hope and ways to combat these differences, because while we may be stuck in a social loop-hole there are available ways to challenge these and make society aware of changes and in act upon them!
Stereotypes are relatively fixed, overgeneralized attitudes and behaviors that are considered normal and appropriate for a person in a culture based on race, gender, and religion.They are assumptions that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group, based on an image about what people in
People are not one dimensional. Everyone has multiple identities that when combined, form who we are. The way these identities intersect shape our realities, impact how we experience life, and influence the way we are treated by others within society. The Intersecting Axes of Privilege, Domination, and Oppression diagram addresses multiple identities such as gender, sex, race, age, class, sexual orientation, etc. The identities examined in the diagram visualize that people are more likely to have privilege or face oppression depending on their classification within a specific identity. Due to intersectionality, many experience both privilege and oppression simultaneously. The four oppressive systems that have impacted my life in various ways are race, sex, heritage, and language bias.
In many circles of the world, various groups of people distinguish themselves from one another through religion, language, culture, and sometimes gender. People also develop stereotypes about a particular group of people in order to identify them. However, most of the time, these stereotypes hold true for only some members of a group. Sometimes, these stereotypes are just plain misconceptions that do not even apply to the group it claims to. Stereotypes are placed on people because it is a way to easily identify what type of person or ethnicity an individual is. At one point in time, these stereotypes may have been true; however, in today’s modern society, most of these stereotypes are outdated and false, which leads them to turn into misconceptions. Usually, stereotypes are utilized to humiliate and degrade the person or group; they also do not provide any beneficial outcomes. Stereotypes focus on how a particular group acts because of the radical ideas and actions of the few, how a particular group looks, or how that group is physically lacking in some way. These stereotypes often lead to conflicts because the group does not appreciate the way it is being perceived. Seldom are the stereotypes placed on a group of people truthful and accurate. Some hardly even apply to the particular group people it claims to. It is true that how people are perceived has a big impact on how other individuals interact with them; however, people are not perceiving these groups correctly.
In Henry Lewis Gates’ article, The Debate Has Been Miscast from the Start, he reveals the advantages to having multiculturalism in the curriculum of America’s schools. He would argue that in order to create true diversity and understanding of cultural differences, the nation must provide its students with a wide array of opportunities to understand other cultures besides their own. Peggy McIntosh takes on a similar situation when she takes into consideration how she was taught diversity in schools as a child. She claims that dominance of the white race is unconsciously supported. She also describes how she did not receive the right kind of education that would teach her how to be aware of racism and how to be aware of her privileges as a white person. McIntosh desires change in the way that students are taught racism and the best way to accomplish this is for schools to incorporate multiculturalism into curriculum. If this is accomplished, future generations have the ability to be aware of cultural differences and they would be less likely to be perpetrators of color blind racism.
“What is a stereotype? Stereotypes are qualities assigned to groups of people related to their race, nationality and sexual orientation, to name a few. Because they generalize groups of people in manners that lead to discrimination and ignore the diversity within groups, stereotypes should be avoided” (“What Is a Stereotype”). Both positive and negative stereotypes exist, but both are equally dangerous. All stereotypes, whether positive or negative, limit whatever group of people it is assigned to to a certain set of traits, and let’s face it, a human being’s personality is far too complex to be limited to a mere set of three or four traits. A stereotype creates a preconceived notion of how an individual belonging to a certain group should look, act, dress, and even speak. A prime example of this would be the very recent happenings in the case of Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin was a seventeen year old African-American male, profiled as a criminal.
Stereotypes are a side of our everyday life. We tend to hear stereotypes every day and everywhere. Frequently, we can find ourselves in a position where we make stereotypes for a big category of people. Every one of us, young or old, is characterized with either positive or negative stereotypes. Stereotyping is a method that people characterize each other. Each set is called by name, that doesn 't really able to everyone in that particular set of group. Stereotypes influence people’s public lives, emotions or mental state, and how people communicate with their community. Gender, sexual, and Racial traits are one of the largest stereotypes. Others may include ethnicity, religion, or other categories. These stereotypes can be seen in T.V Shows
1 a : the act of discriminating b : the process by which two stimuli differing in some aspect are responded to differently
While similar, the terms stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination all have their own distinct meanings. Gorham defines stereotypes as the organization of beliefs and assumptions people have toward social groups (19). Stereotypes can often be misrepresentative of a particular group because people unknowingly make assumptions about other people based on the knowledge they have acquired from media and/or people not in that particular social group. Examples of stereotypes can be beliefs that people of Asian descent are inherently good at math or that all black men are criminals. Unlike stereotypes which are predetermined assumptions people make about social groups, prejudice is holding negative feelings toward a group of people without fairly
Stereotypes are a fixed image of all members of a culture, group, or race, usually based on limited and inaccurate information resulting from the minimal contact with these stereotyped groups. Stereotypes have many forms: people are stereotyped according to their religion, race, ethnicity, age, gender, color, or national origins. This kind of intolerance is focused on the easily observable characteristics of groups of people. In general, stereotypes reduce individuals to a rigid and inflexible image that doesn't account for the multi-dimensional nature of human beings. One example of stereotypes is the categorization of the Jews in the Elizabethan era.
Stereotypes are assumptions that are made about an entire group of people based on observations of a few; they act as scapegoats for prejudice behaviour and ideologies.
Diversity is a notion, when applied to the majority of circumstances, can create a positive conclusion. The trick to producing a positive outcome is often how the different aspects are brought together. Consider a classic dinner combination peas and carrots, the two colors look appealing and the two flavors comes together as one making a superb side dish. Now consider oil and water, these two substance are not often considered a good combination. Although, this is not always the case; olive oil and vinegar (which is water based) when mixed, come together into a delectable salad dressing. Diversity and inclusion should also apply to humans by bringing people together who are different it can creates a whole that is enhanced by the uniqueness of each individual.
The concept of privilege intersects with the treatment of persons with disabilities in many ways. In order to first understand how it intersects we must first define the word privilege. Privilege refers to the “rights, advantages and protection enjoyed by some at the expense of and beyond the rights, advantages, and protections available to others” (= , Ch 5). According to Peggy McIntosh, “We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck” (White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, 2). Privilege intersects with the treatment of people with disabilities because “privilege is socially constructed to benefit the member of the dominant group” (=, ch 5). For example, an able-bodied person does
Discrimination. Intersecting identities. Domination. In today’s society, people are criticized in others of their race, gender, abilities, age, etc., as those certain people are trying to destroy our humanity. Creating this problem in the society, will affect the social, political, and economic factors for many countries, also starting a war between different race or ethnicity. The role of being diversity in modern society, gives people to communicate better and have more confidence to express our opinions or beliefs. Intersectionality, is a study of meeting different groups with similar aspects/appearances, but they’re consider as inequality in the society or had faced discrimination; it relates to my privileged life by being