Identity's Role In Treating Prejudice

Across the nation, millions of Americans of all races turn on the television or open a newspaper and are bombarded with images of well dressed, articulate, attractive black people advertising different products and representing respected companies. The population of black professionals in all arenas of work has risen to the point where seeing a black physician, attorney, or a college professor are becoming more a common sight. More and more black people are holding positions of respect and authority throughout America today, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice and many other prominent black executives. As a result of their apparent success, these black people are seen as role models for many Americans, despite their race.

Prejudice is when we have a preconceived opinion about someone or a group of people that is formed without knowledge, or even a real understanding about them.

To want change, it requires a vivid mindset. To envision that life is occupied with a multitude of differences. To understand that things may not go the way you would like it to. To comprehend that everything you do and live by contributes to the life you live. Which includes your race, class, gender, sexuality and even religion. All of these aspects mentioned, shapes an individual, and in a way pathes their future. In this research paper, there will be a exploration on identity, diversity, stereotypes, discrimination, difference, and oppression that everyone in some lifetime will face . The evaluation will help get a effective comprehension of cultural identity and intersectionality.

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

Most people in today’s society may believe that prejudice and discrimination mean the same thing and most people may not pay attention to the fact that there is a huge difference between the two terms. The main difference between these terms is, prejudice is a negative idea about a certain group of people or people of a particular race. The person usually doesn’t act on the idea, they mainly just keep it to themselves. Most would describe it as being a “pre-judgement”. Discrimination, on the other hand, is far much worse than just being prejudice. Discrimination is prejudice put into action/practice. This involves treating people harmfully and disrespecting them as an individual just because they don’t look like you or because they belong to a specific group of people. There are three different forms of discrimination and they are: Individual Discrimination, Statistical Discrimination, and Institutional Discrimination. Both of these terms falls under the category, racism. Racism is the most talked about thing in the United States today. I completely disagree with the term “racism” as a whole and I completely disagree that it is being taught. Blacks and whites of the United States should always be against racism. Racism is not something that we are born with--it is something that we are taught and honestly society, parents, teachers, and movies play a big role in it. Some can teach it the right way and some can teach it the wrong way, and this is where we went wrong in

In common sense thought, race is simply a fact: humans are not all alike, there are whites, blacks and yellows, maybe reds and browns too, and these different kinds are races, and that's just a feature of the way the world is. However, recent work on the concept of "race" shows that "race" and "race"-talk can be understood by analogy to what Foucault suggests about psychiatry and mental illness coming into being together: (1) it is now beginning to appear than "race" and racism came into existence together as well. It is racism that has made talk of race something that we can take seriously. A statement attributing intelligence or laziness to a person on the basis of her/ his skin color, can only be judged true if there are resources in

Why does the United States have to use this word called prejudice and why do we have to use this word to discriminate hate? People today in this generation as I am typing this paper they are either judging or misjudging one another by the color tone of their skin. Most or maybe all of us are being treated differently by their looks of their body parts, the stylish clothes they are wearing, or what type of things they do just to live to get thought the day without any trouble. Many of us have been through struggles to make their lives better to having luxury items to make them feel joyful to live their lives every day. Living their lives to the fullest, or the best way they can to make themselves feel special in a way.

America has been a multicultural country since the beginning. Yet, we all still view and hear about different racial discrimination going on. In Martinizes book, seeing more than Black and White, she states the term “the color of culture”; which focuses on labeling each culture and ethnic group to only African Americans or White decedent. Yet, there are many other races and ethnic groups in America that aren’t being noticed when it comes to being ethnically discriminated based on culture, ethnicity, language and nationality that creates the “other” category in our society. Even though, many of us have been here for many generations; the ones that are outside of being labeled as “White-majority” are continually facing prejudice and discrimination

In contemporary Australian society, blatant racial prejudice has become socially undesirable (Dunn, Forrest, Burnley, & McDonald, 2004). This does not mean that those beliefs and attitudes have become extinct, but instead, it has changed into a new form of racial prejudice that is inherent and subtle (Willard, Isaac, & Carney, 2015) and leads to a differentiation between groups, that manifests unconsciously as cultural intolerance (Brewer & Kramer, 1985; Chaxel, 2015; Dunn et al., 2004; Hewstone & Greenland, 2000; Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002; Willard et al., 2015). The contributing factors to these manifestations come from the intergroup relationship themes of identity, stereotyping and ethnocentrism.

In psychology, prejudice is different from discrimination. Prejudice is an unjustifiable and often negative stereotyped attitude that a person holds against the members of a particular social group. Whereas, discrimination is when prejudicial attitudes cause members of a particular group to be treated differently than others in situations that call for equal treatment. Thus, prejudice leads to discrimination. There are several factors that contribute to prejudice and discrimination, and there are many techniques for reducing the development of prejudice and discrimination.

The idea that is paramount in the battle against prejudice and stereotyping is this idea of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, or the idea that people will hear other peoples’ beliefs about them and then will enact in behavior that re-enforces the belief that others have (19-20). In the video when the subject of the students fears of doing badly because they don’t want to fulfill the biases other people have of them, is then re-enforced by the idea that those individuals in the prejudicial groups with that bias against them, actually don’t do well in school, statistically (19-20). It is even further produced by the thought of “The New Jim Crow” segment, and how white people have a bias that African Americans are criminals, when in actuality they commit the ultimate attribution error (32-33). Additionally, it also produces the idea in society of African Americans that they are supposed to be criminals and when they are treated this way, they then become exactly what we believe them to be (32-33).

In today’s world, there are many social issues, like poverty, vandalism and unemployment. However, prejudice has become the most dramatic one. Prejudging people for their appearance is a common practice that humans perform. People are not only ridiculed for their color, but also by their religion, sex or age. Therefore, I consider that racism, ageism and sexism are the three major problems in our society and we need to cease them immediately. Much of our world’s history were based upon racism. In the 1600’s, white men used Africans as slaves and treated them as they were not human. "Colored" people were not even allowed to use the same drinking fountains as white people. Fortunately, in the last three decades, race

The Problem with society is that we cannot accept that we are all different. Many people have seen others as different from themselves but feel that they are in the majority of people that are alike. This can be called social discrimination. Stereotypes are prevalent in society. Stereotypes are inevitable and unpreventable. As we accept that we are always under scrutiny in others eyes we begin to examine ourselves. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of stereotyping and discover how they lead to greater social identity. Once they learn their identity they find themselves stereotyping themselves and others.

Individuals with serious mental illness are doubly affected by their disease; not only do they experience the often debilitating symptoms of their condition, but they must also endure mundane mental health stigmas and prejudices. Stigmatized attitudes are perceived to be one of the greatest impediments to living a complete and fulfilling life. Stigma has been defined as a combination of three related problems: ignorance, prejudice and discrimination (Rose, Thornicroft, Pinfold, & Kassam, 2007). Ignorance implies a lack of knowledge, prejudice entails negative attitudes, and discrimination involves exclusionary actions against people deemed to be different. Two forms of stigma are commonly distinguished in literature. Public stigma describes the attitudes of society towards people with mental illness, while self-stigma results from the internalization of prejudice by people who suffer from mental health conditions (Corrigan, Powell, & Rüsch, 2012). The World Health Organization announced that stigma was the most crucial obstacle to overcome for a community to functioning effectively and efficiently (Ontario Hospital Association, 2013).

In any society, how we see ourselves and how others treat us depends on many factors. Race, ethnicity, and cultural background are identifiers of individuals. Most people have confronted prejudice based on these identifiers, either personally experiencing discrimination or knowing someone who has. Beyond ensuring organizational compliance with a country’s anti-discrimination laws, it is incumbent upon managers to support diversity in the workplace and to be culturally competent.