Table of Contents
What is Prejudice?
What is Difference between Prejudice and Stereotyping?
Prejudice is a negative perspective, an unjustifiable position or attitude that someone is holding versus a person or a group. One can easily fall under unconscious bias or stereotyping which leads to prejudice and discrimination.
Approving somebody’s actions or being contrary to one person or a group on the grounds of age, gender, physical abilities or appearance, sexual orientation can come from our background or personal experiences.
As Jane Elliot showed in her Blue Eyes Brown Eyes experiment, our prejudices are ingrained, we are not born with them and we learn them from our parents, school, and society. Nature versus nurture, can we outlearn our prejudices?
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Charles Lamb was quoted by Gordon Allport in his book, “The Nature of Prejudice” (p3) “I am a bundle of prejudices – made up likings and disliking – the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies”. In order to make sense of the world around us, it’s important to sort information into mental categories. ‘The human mind must think with the aid of categories. Once formed, categories are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process. Orderly living depends upon it.’ (Ibidem)
We all heard from our parents and grandparents: all gypsies are thieves; all children’s thieves will become thieves. Or in the schoolyard: all children who wear glasses are nerds, do not play with them! This is called by Gordon Allport in the chapter “The Young Child” (p 307-308), “The First Stage in Learning Prejudice”.
As a consequence of the first stage, follows the total rejection of the discriminated person/group. “The Second Stage in Learning Prejudice” (p 309-310): children do not play/socialize with the newcomers, some restaurants display the sign:” No travelers allowed! “, “Or we reserve the right to select our clients!”
Treating people unfairly, because of who they are or because they belong to a certain group, is called discriminatory behavior and it can be done directly or indirectly.
The Equality Act 2010 was created to engage in fighting discrimination on account of age, gender, religion, race, pregnancy and maternity, disability, sexual orientation, gender reassignment and marriage and civil partnership.
Stereotyping is sometimes used to justify improper behavior against minority groups. Because it does not come from an objective knowledge and rational observation it is based on an extreme interpretation, misjudgment, and fabrications.
The term comes from typography, where identical copies are created; likewise, a stereotype identifies all members of a certain category by some negative features (‘all Roma are stealing, all lawyers are greedy”).
In the workplace, discrimination may be experienced by a person because the employers prejudice and negative stereotyping against certain groups.
For example, he/she does not want to hire people of an ethnic group because he thinks they are “lazy” or he/she does not want to hire or promote women because of his/her fear they will be less dedicated to the job.
In both these cases, the employer acted on his/her negative beliefs he/she holds against women or any ethnic group.
Institutional racism as defined by Lord Macpherson (1999, para 6.34) and quoted by Savita Kumra and Simonetta Manfredi in their book “Managing Equality and Diversity”(p 118) is “the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin”. Resulting from the downfall of Stephen Lawrence’s case, an amendment was created in order to prevent further discrimination. The Race Relations Act 2000 is raising awareness for race equality in all public services: police, fire service, prison service and others.
Some entrepreneurs, in spite of their prejudices, may act however fairly. For example, a manager may be prejudiced against older workers, but he or she will hire them anyway just to prevent legal consequences.
Also, behavior forms such as social distance between different ethnic or social groups who have little or no voluntary interaction with each other can create or sustain prejudices which in turn can lead to discriminatory behavior.
In conclusion, it can be observed that people’s attitudes, informed by prejudice or stereotypes, can both influence behavior and create discrimination, but can also create or reinforce social distance. Discrimination, however, can fuel prejudice as well as create or reinforce social distance.
Allport pinpoints 5 levels of negative actions: “Antilocution, Avoidance, Discrimination, Physical attack, Extermination”.
According to Gordon Allport, “The Nature of Prejudice” (p.14)”few people keeps their antipathies for themselves”. Thus he classified our behavior in opportunistic functioning and appropriate functioning. The opportunist tends to satisfy only his biological survival needs and the appropriate functionalist is expressing his self, future oriented and pro-active being.
The Functionalist Theory views society as composed of different parts working together and it is focusing on how each part influences and is influenced discrimination.
The famous social psychologist, M. Sherif came up with The Realistic Conflict Theory, which suggests that group conflicts, negative prejudices, and stereotypes are the result of competition between groups for little resources (jobs, land). Sherif validated his theory in one his most famous experiments, ‘The Robber’s Cave’ by imitating different situations that all people are dealing with on the daily basis. (In times of high unemployment there might be increased levels of racism among white people who believe that black people or asylum seekers have taken their jobs)
The Symbolic Interactions Theory perspective reveals that reality as we perceive it is a social result born from social interaction, and only exists within a given social context. We learn to be prejudiced as we learn other things (teenagers learn to smoke from the need to be a part of a group – because everyone in their group does it; they also learn that the new kid in school is automatically a poor kid- because comes from a black or immigrant family).
How Can We Outlearn Prejudice?
By changing social norms through education and laws enforcing equality, by social dialogue; by inclusion and intergroup contact; by raising awareness in society, work and families; by providing equality and diversity trainings to all stuff, especially to those in HR departments. 39% of the respondents of one survey conducted by Unison (EQUALITY SURVEY 2018) declared that their employer did not provide any equality –issues training. The same survey revealed that 29.5% of the respondents have been discriminated at work out of which 70% was carried out by their manager.
On a more encouraging note, “More and more organizations are recognizing that people bring intrinsic value to business by their unique set of skills, knowledge and abilities, and promote organizational environments that allow these individual attributes to flourish” (CIPD 2017b, 2018).
References
- G. Allport(1954) –“ The Nature of Prejudice”
- Sherif et al (1961) – The ‘Robber’s Cave’ study
- Savita Kumra, Simonetta Manfredi (2012) – “Managing Equality and Diversity”
- https://janeelliott.com/
- https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/diversity-and-inclusion-at-work
