Prejudice and Discrimination
• Stereotype – false or generalized beliefs about
a group of people without regard for
individual differences
• Prejudice – a set of opinions, attitudes and
feelings that cast members in a negative light
without legitimate reasons
• Discrimination – inequitable treatment of
people based on race, gender, ethnicity,
nationality, faith, sexual orientation
Types of Discrimination
• Systematic – institutionalized
– discrimination supported by official or unofficial
laws
– eg. Apartheid in South Africa
• Unofficial
– individual groups or organizations who decide to
discriminate against others
– eg. unfair hiring practices
– ‘old boy’s club’
• Harassment
• discrimination in the form of verbal or physical
abuse
• eg. as ‘minor’ as name calling or as violent as
death
• Segregation
– certain groups are forced to live, work, go to
school separately
– 1950’s USA
• Expulsion
– removal of a group/individual from society
– eg. Japanese internment of WWII
• Genocide
– widespread killing of members of a certain group,
often in the name of ‘progress’
– eg. Nazi Germany – 6,000,000 Jews murdered
– 1988 Iraq – Kurdish villagers subjected to poison
gas
– Bosnian Serbs “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims
Systematic Discrimination up close
• during the late 1800’s, early 1900’s restrictions
were placed on immigrants to Canada
• (still are today but for very different reasons)
• 1939 – 907 Jewish refuges from Europe were
refused entry and sent back where most were
eventually killed in concentration camps
• women were not granted the vote anywhere in
Canada until 1915 in Manitoba, it wasn’t until
1929 before it was allowed in all of Canada
• Aboriginal people living in Canada were not
granted the federal vote until 1962
• prisoners in federal institutions just recently
regained the right to vote after a long absence
Stanford-Binet
• I.Q. Test
• still used today despite being culturally loaded
• for example: “categorize the following product
– Crisco”, is this a cooking product, a clothing
product, a household item or a product for
farm use
• How is this reflective of innate intelligence?
Circles of Prejudice
• approximately 15% of Canadians are overtly
prejudice
• 15% of Canadians are free of racial bias
• therefore 70% of Canadians have varying
degrees of prejudice
– these prejudices are mostly based on colour or
facial features
• there are basically two circles
• 1. economic
• 2. psychological
• example of a circle, father speaks of or acts in a
negative manner towards a certain racial group;
son accepts that this behaviour is
acceptable/normal; child behaves in a similar
manner after they have passed their formative
years
Explanations (Excuses?) for Prejudice
• studies have shown (in general) a correlation
between higher education and tollerance or
acceptance of differences
• in other words, prejudice has it’s roots in
ignorance
• Ethnocentrism- a belief that one’s culture,
ethnicity, or way of life is superior to others
• eg?????, Toronto?????
Racial Identity
• although the term ‘race’ is not biologically
sound, we all have a ‘racial identity’ within
ourselves and identify others in a general
sense that way
• certain fears/misconceptions are tied to these
5 Causes of Prejudice
• A. Ignorance
• i) Modelling – we copy attitudes and actions
we see, ie. at home, on television, books,
papers, friends
• ii) Mere exposure – we tend to dislike groups
of people that are unfamiliar to us
– repeated exposure may change this
• iii) Behavioural conditioning – if prejudice
actions are rewarded, we will continue
• B. Fear
• iv) Memory availability – we tend to remember
vivid incidents of individuals and transfer those to
the group that they are ‘associated’ with
• v) Inferiority – if we feel inferior we will put
down others therefore, raising our self image
• Prejudice vs. preference - discuss
Hate Crimes
• September 2001
• Belfast Northern Ireland
• schoolgirls (ages 4-12) verbally harrassed and
had objects thrown at them by members of
another religion (Catholics vs. Protestants)
•
Holy Cross Girls Primary School, Ardoyne, Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the 30year conflict known as The Troubles, Ardoyne had become segregated –
Protestants lived in one area and Irish Catholics in another. This left Holy Cross—a
Catholic primary school for girls—stuck in the middle of a Protestant area. In June
2001, Protestant loyalists began picketing the school, claiming that Catholics were
regularly attacking their homes and denying them access to facilities. For weeks,
hundreds of protesters tried to stop the schoolchildren and their parents from
walking to school through their area. Some protesters shouted sectarian abuse
and threw stones, bricks, fireworks, blast bombs and urine-filled balloons at the
schoolchildren and their parents. Hundreds of riot police, backed-up by British
soldiers, escorted them through the protest each day. The scenes of frightened
Catholic schoolgirls running a gauntlet of abuse from loyalist protesters as they
walked to school captured world headlines. Death threats were made against the
parents and school staff by a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand
Defenders. The protest was condemned by politicians from both sides and by
people from both the Catholic and Protestant communities. Some likened the
protest to child abuse and compared the protesters to American white
supremacists in 1950s Alabama.
• December 1989
• Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal
• Mark Lepine
• 1998 Central Texas
• White teenagers dragged a black man around
town behind their pick up truck
•
James Byrd, Jr. (May 2, 1949 – June 7, 1998) was an African-American who was
murdered by three men, of whom at least two were white supremacists, in Jasper,
Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John King
dragged Byrd behind a pick-up truck along an asphalt road. Byrd, who remained
conscious throughout most of the ordeal, was killed when his body hit the edge of
a culvert, severing his right arm and head. The murderers drove on for another
mile before dumping his torso in front of an African-American cemetery in Jasper.
Byrd's lynching-by-dragging gave impetus to passage of a Texas hate crimes law. It
later led to the federal October 22, 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr.
Hate Crimes Prevention Act, commonly known as the Matthew Shepard Act.
President Barack Obama signed the bill into law on October 28, 2009.
•
Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed by lethal injection for this crime by the
state of Texas on September 21, 2011. King remains on Texas' death row while
appeals are pending, while Berry was sentenced to life imprisonment.
• Laramie, Wyoming, 1998
• Matthew Sheppard, beaten and tied to a
fence post in the dead of winter
• Why?, because he was gay
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Shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998, Shepard met Aaron McKinney and Russell
Henderson for the first time at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie, Wyoming. It was decided that
McKinney and Henderson would give Shepard a ride home. McKinney and Henderson
subsequently drove the car to a remote, rural area and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and
torture Shepard, tying him to a fence and leaving him to die. According to their court
testimony, McKinney and Henderson also discovered his address and intended to steal from
his home. Still tied to the fence, Shepard, who was still alive but in a coma, was discovered 18
hours later by Aaron Kreifels, a cyclist who initially mistook Shepard for a scarecrow.
Shepard had suffered fractures to the back of his head and in front of his right ear. He
experienced severe brainstem damage, which affected his body's ability to regulate heart
rate, body temperature, and other vital functions. There also were about a dozen small
lacerations around his head, face, and neck. His injuries were deemed too severe for doctors
to operate. Shepard never regained consciousness and remained on full life support. While
he lay in intensive care, candlelight vigils were held by the people of Laramie.
Shepard was pronounced dead at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998, at Poudre Valley Hospital,
in Fort Collins, Colorado. He was 21 years old.
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Other famous hate crimes
Columbine High School in Colorado (1999)
World Trade Centre/Pentagon (2001)
Newtown Connecticut Elementary School
(2012)
Characteristics of Hate Crimes
• i) the hatred is intense and impersonal
• not directed specifically at an individual but
rather directed at an individual that is
representative of a group
• different from ‘crimes of passion’ whereby
personal anger is the cause
• different from ‘felony crimes’ where personal
gain is the motivation
• in the scenarios previously mentioned the victims
were generally unknown to the perpetrators
• ii) the hatred is based on prejudice and
power
• usually through excess numbers, surprise or
superior weaponry
• iii) the hatred is directed at scapegoats for
other frustrations
• failures in own life are blamed on certain
groups and actually rationalized in
perpetrators mind eg. Marc Lepine believed
that women were the reason he was not
admitted to engineering school
• these groups are easily identifiable minorities or
at least groups
• crimes are committed in order to ‘keep someone
in their place’ or prevent them from increasing
their social station at the expense of the
perpetrator
• **Genocide can be considered a National
Systematic hate crime
• in fact, the UN prosecutes these under the
heading of Crimes Against Humanity
Conformity and Alienation
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Reasons to conform:
List
Highway traffic Act
Religious beliefs
job security
Groups
• Definition of a basic group – 2 or more people
who interact and are aware of having
something in common
• eg. family, team, staff
Types of Groups
• Primary – small group
• members have a personal, emotional
relationship
• eg. include family, close friends
• deal face to face
• interested in most aspects of each others
personality and personal life
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Secondary – broader groups
more impersonal, formal
eg. typical high school population
interested in one particular aspect of certain
individuals
• can accomplish complex tasks with large
groups of people
• Norms
• expected behaviours by a group
• vary depending the group that you are
associating with at the time
• basic norms include: table manners, hygiene,
style of dress, type of greeting
• failure to comply may/could cause suspicion
or hostility
• many norms arise from important group
values associated with strong feelings of right
and wrong – known as ‘mores’
• ethical and sexual behaviour is shaped
drastically by these values
• Sanctions
• used to encourage members to conform
• rewards or punishments to encourage certain
behaviour
• can be as simple as ignoring or rejecting
• Zimbardo prison experiment
• showed how random individuals responded
and conformed to roles as inmates/prison
guards when placed in this situation
• Milgram experiment
• study to examine people’s willingness to resist
authority
Collective Behaviour
• Crowd
• a group of people temporarily gathered
together
• gather for many different reasons such as
basketball game, shopping, concert
• Casual Crowds
• rarely interact with one another
• however, there are circumstances when
individuals must decide whether or not to get
involved in what is going on
• eg. Kitty Genovese, Reginald Denny
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Factors affecting involvement:
size of group
people with the bystander
whether someone else intervenes
• Acting Crowds
• does some kind of physical activity, tries to
cause change, has goals, may act aggressively,
may be affectionate
• these may be dangerous because:
• often see things in black and white, right and
wrong
• there is little room for compromise,
discussion, rational thinking
• can be swayed directly by an effective speaker
• people may lose individuality and behave less
responsibly than if alone
• active crowds can beome:
• Mobs – show aggressive/anti-social behaviour,
may attack people and destroy property
• Riots – caused by unorganized and aggressive
crowds, may consist of a number of mobs
each pursuing its own path