Advantages And Disadvantages Of Contact Theory

Historically, segregation has been based on race. More specifically, people were segregated based on their racial groups. This system generally applies to everyday activities including public transportation, public facilities, education, employment, or even amenities including toilets and drinking fountains. This act is regarded as a form of discrimination as it uses race or skin color as the basis for acceptance. However, although racial segregation is frowned upon, there are some cases in which this system of

The Apartheid was initiated as a ploy for Europeans to better control the exploited populations for economic gain, as maintaining tension between the different racial classifications diverted attention from the Europeans as it fed hatred between groups. This assisted in minimizing unity between the exploited to rally against European control as it backhandedly induced “submission” for survival. One way of accomplishing this was by instilling laws that’d force segregation, classification, educational “requirements”, and economic purposes. The Population Registration Act of 1950 enacted, requiring segregation of Europeans from Afrikaans . Following shortly, the Group Areas Act of 1950 was enacted as a new form of legislation alongside the Population Registration Act. This detailed act separated tribes based on ethnics; consequently, further detailing segregation amongst the natives .

The thesis of the book is that segregation of black and whites was developed later in life than it did when slavery was just introduce. In the earlier years blacks and white would live within the same residence and or property, sharing the same premises if not equal facilities. The black and white would attend the same church and sit in the pews. As life progress and economics and Political conflicts took place that’s when the segregation began.

Racial prejudice toward minority groups has been a problem throughout all of history. While overt racism and prejudice may be diminished from the days of our dark past, covert racism is very much alive. Society loves to embellish on how far the country has come in the fight against racial prejudice by highlighting significant events such as having the first black president. Yet there are still too many instances of subtle racism. In 2011, there were almost 700,000 incidents of stop and frisk policing in New York. Nine out of ten of these incidents involved blacks or Hispanics, which is ridiculous because blacks make up less than a quarter of the New York Population (Bobo 2013). Prejudice causes unfair treatment to innocent people. Everyone should be treated the same and given the same amount of respect. Continuing the fight towards an unprejudiced world has so many benefits including making sure everyone feels safe and respected in society and the possibility to learn from other ethnic groups. A world without prejudice would be a much more effective world with more time spent on making life better for all instead of violence and hate. Government officials and psychologists are trying to advertise how being in contact with other ethnic groups has reduced prejudice. Many psychologists are already praising contact theory research for its contribution toward world peace and its efforts against prejudice (Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, and Tredoux 2010). However, the two empirical

On a daily basis one has the ability of witnessing individuals of different social classes interact, mix, and sunder into groups amongst themselves. As one observes people interacting with each

The South African Apartheid, instituted in 1948 by the country’s Afrikaner National Party, was legalized segregation on the basis of race, and is a system comparable to the segregation of African Americans in the United States. Non-whites - including blacks, Indians, and people of color in general- were prohibited from engaging in any activities specific to whites and prohibited from engaging in interracial marriages, receiving higher education, and obtaining certain jobs. The National Party’s classification of “race” was loosely based on physical appearance and lineage. White individuals were superficially defined as being “obviously white'' on the basis of their “habits, education and speech as well as deportment and demeanor”; an

Throughout history there have been many individuals that changed the course of social, economic and public systems for people across Canada and the United States. Segregation has been a long standing issue affecting African American individuals. Segregation is “the institutional separation of an ethnic, racial, religious, or other minority group from the dominant majority.” (Dictionary.com, 2005).

I say that segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart. Many Americans don’t want to admit it, but I’ll say that segregation is still around, sometimes by design and sometimes by choice. According to a study last year, 43% of Latinos and 38% of blacks go to schools where less than 10% of their peers are white, but beyond that, we often fail to talk about how segregation impacts us personally. How it permeates not only many of our public and private institutions, but American culture at large easily talk about culture or social segregation an area that we have control over, via the restaurants we patronize, the bars we drink at and the places we worship. People who have studied race, spent months abroad in India or Africa, tasted the best fufu and mofongo, read Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Pablo Neruda, and who may even have black “friends” or lovers, still too often manage to have a community that doesn't reflect diversity in their broader city or

Segregation, an word that has haunted countless AfricanAmericans for years upon years. Segregation is the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart. It has cut AfricanAmericans short from many opportunities, leaving us dumb founded.

The convergence of racial unity and inroads towards the non-classification of race has been compromised by the accumulation of rights, privileges, and perceptions of the “whites”, and the life experiences, inequalities and societal impediments of the ‘non-white”. These experiences represent an overarching inability to forge ahead without cognizant realizations of past injustices and reparation for past aggressions. Noting the attempts at racial reunification in South Africa and the redress of exclusionary policies existing within the

According to Massey and Denton (1988), residential segregation “is the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment”(282). Now this is a pretty general definition, but it gives basic but good insight as to what residential desegregation is talking about. In this paper, I will mostly be focusing on residential segregation as it relates to the black and white populations in relation to one another, although I will be referencing some other races briefly to create a better understanding of concepts or ideas.

Prejudice can be overcome through education, equal status intergroup contact, and working together to achieve a specific goal. For instance, education and learning about people who are different (the out-group) and noticing similarities instead of differences can combat prejudice. Also, equal status contact has been shown to reduce prejudice and discrimination. Equal status contact requires the different groups to all be in the same situation with neither group holding power over the other. In equal status contact, personal involvement with people from another group must be cooperative and occur when all groups are equal in terms of power or status to have a positive effect on reducing prejudice. Also, having people work together to solve a problem because each person has an important key to solving the problem, creating a mutual interdependence, helps reduce prejudice. This technique is called the jigsaw

South Africa has a history of legal segregation (Apartheid) which stems from prejudice, discrimination and anxiety with regards to intergroup contact. However, after 1994, when South Africa was declared a democracy, segregation was declared illegal and the society became racially mixed. Nevertheless, segregation still seems to be a contemporary phenomenon, though not legally enforced. In this essay I will explore Contact Theory as a way of reducing prejudice and intergroup anxiety; I will also discuss segregation and desegregation within the context of South Africa and our history and comment on whether inter-racial co-existence can be considered as the successful desegregation of South Africa. Lastly, I will also look at contact as a viable solution to segregation that is still taking place within our society.

Race, gender, sexuality and class are intersectional socially constructed concepts and institutions that create perceived differences and hierarchies that separate humans in society and reproduce positions of domination and subordination through the process of ‘othering’ (Collins, 1990). It is through this process of ‘othering’ and the representations of it that the inclusion and exclusion of groups occurs, resulting in the subordination and domination of these groups (Hall, 2001). This essay will discuss these notions of inclusionary and exclusionary othering, specifically within the South African context. The importance of doing so lies in that various literature has been written on ‘othering’ however, most of it explores othering as an

Humanity is composed of individuals with different origins, beliefs, and characteristics, aspects that have significantly promoted separation in the society. Racial segregation entails the division based on race or ethnicity, an aspect that results in discrimination. In the United States, the separation is experienced in various areas such as public transport, schools, restaurants, and residential places where individuals may be restricted basing on their racial background. Lawrence Otis Graham in his short story ‘The Black Table is Still There’ narrates his experiences in junior high school and relates it to his observation fourteen years later during his visit to the school. In the essay, it is apparent that Graham discloses the societal superficiality integration. This essay provides a concise analysis of Graham’s short story, a real example of racial segregation in the society. Further, the paper explains two other different symbols of racial segregation and their effects on the society or a group of people.