The Impact of Prejudice and Discrimination on Society

Prejudice and discrimination are linked, however they are different terms, prejudice comprises of preconceived negative thoughts or beliefs about individuals who belong to a particular group, whereas discrimination is bigoted behaviour or action that is motivated by unfair beliefs.

Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur

By blaming the Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering through as well as their defeat in WW1, Hitler targeted the Jews as the country’s main enemy. According to him, the Jewish were directly responsible for Germany’s problems. Hitler hated the Jews leading up to the Holocaust because he believed that the Jewish financiers were responsible for sending the world into its first World War, causing the deaths over 100,000 Germans. According to the Nazis the “Aryan race” was the best and strongest race. Jews were of another inferior race. In fact so inferior that they were not considered to be “people” by the

Prejudice and discrimination are linked, however they are different terms, prejudice comprises of preconceived negative thoughts or beliefs about individuals who belong to a particular group, whereas discrimination is bigoted behaviour or action that is motivated by unfair beliefs.

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

The view Adolf Hitler had on the Jewish peoples was that everything was their faults and he hated them. Before Hitler became a Dictator he was a soldier just like everyone else in World War 1 and when the German Empire lost he was in disbelief and just couldn’t believe it. Many nationalist and conservatives believed that Germany had not lost the war on the battlefield but due to betrayal from within, by a ‘stab in the back’. Socialists, communists and particularly Jews were blamed, even though more than 100,000 German and Austrian Jews had served in the war and 12,000 had been killed.

The fundamental root of discrimination is prejudice. Prejudice starts with cognition and our thoughts towards another group which often leads to a generalization or stereotyping (Myers, 2014, pg.572). Stereotyping leads us to emotions directed towards a particular group or person; including fear, hatred, and hostility, fundamentally this is negative prejudice (Myers, 2014, pg.572). Myers (2014) states that if we believe our thoughts to be true, our emotions will lead to the actual act of discrimination. Taking action on prejudice is discrimination; it is the behaviours or actions directed towards a specific distinction of a group (Myers, 2014, ph.572). We do know that discrimination can take many forms, some acceptable and others purely inexcusable.

The word “prejudice” is defined as a ‘preconceived opinion not based on reason or experience’ and differs from discrimination (prejudicial behaviour) which is an outward action that arises from the prejudgments that one may make about an individual. Discriminatory/prejudicial

According to Mail Online, Hitler’s animosity was very strong. “Hitler and the Nazis believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct”. They thought that every person that was a Jew was not a real human and they had no right to live. Once Hitler rose into control, he used his power to campaign against all Jewish people. Nazis made all German people stop shopping in Jewish shops because a Jew was thought to be a “sub-human”. (Mail Online) This was all a part of Hitler’s plan for their downfall. The presence of racism was growing so strong to the point that children were being taught anti-Semitic ideas. In 1935, a group of laws called the Nuremberg Laws were passed and all German citizens, that were Jewish, lost all freedom, independence, and even citizenship. The prejudice increased so vastly that a chemist would not sell medicine to a Jew, even if it would save their life.

The primary source “German Economic Goals and the Jewish question (August 1936)” by Adolf Hitler describes antisemitism was central to Hitler’s political vision and strategy. The Reichstag passed laws such as making the Jewish people liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy, and thus upon the German people. Hitler figured if he destroyed the Jewish people that the world he envisioned would be born. Therefore, he staged the holocaust to eliminate the Jews from German culture. The factors that contributed towards the Nazi hatred of the Jews includes the ideas of ‘Positive Christianity’ supported by Nazi Movement. Additionally, racial and political factors were significant in their relations to anti-Semitism during World War I, which singled out the Jews as a threat to the established order of society in German. These factors made the Jews a target for persecution and ultimate destruction by the Nazis.

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

Unfortunately due to our past history, discrimination had been among us from since decades. Discrimination and prejudice would probably be among us until the end of the world. Prejudice and discrimination is an action that treats people unfairly because of their membership in a particular social group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs to rather on that individual. It is an unfair treatment to a person, racial group, and minority. It is an action based on prejudice.

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.

As discussed, In the scientific field, it is understood that there are major differences between prejudice and discrimination, although seemingly similar due to their relation. However, prejudice pertains strictly to the attitude that one may develop, (Sartore-Baldwin 2013, Duckworth 2015, Mifflin Company 2002) and discrimination is defined based on actual negative actions aimed towards individuals. Prejudices may be established due to the dislike of someone 's sex, gender identity race, age, or even sexual preferences. Discrimination is based on those prejudices one develops, and that can cause one’s actions towards an individual to be negatively unjust. It is possible for an individual

I think privilege is often invisible because people simply do not think of it. We do not look to our parents living in an area in which we went to a good school as being a privilege, but simply as a part of our lives. We do the same in many situations, taking for granted the things that we have that others may not. I believe the people most likely to be aware of privilege are the people most likely to be underprivileged. People of minority races, women, gays, transsexuals and intersexuals, and those of alternate religions are more likely to be under privileged and so more likely to be aware of it. Bias is a very real thing and it effects people’s lives in many ways, sometimes large and sometimes small. Whether a person is openly refused