Racism, Prejudice,
and Discrimination
Chapter 7
The Continuing Struggle
for Minority Civil Rights
• Despite the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka U.S.
Supreme Court decision, the Civil Rights Act, and
subsequent legislations, the discrepancy between legal
equality and actual inequality has remained in American
society
• The terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 showed
how national and world events can quickly change the
fortunes of particular minority groups
• The situations of immigrant groups highlights the
problems of minority status in the United States
The Social Construction of Minorities
• Racial minorities are groups that are set apart on
the basis of physical characteristics
• Ethnic minorities are groups that are set apart on
the basis of nationality and culture
• Assimilation is the process by which a minority
group takes on the culture of the dominant group
The Social Construction of Minorities
• Five characteristics that determine minority status
in society
• 1. Minority groups are subordinate segments of a
complex society
• 2. Minority groups have traits that set them apart
and are devalued by dominant segment of the
society
• 3. Subordinate groups develop a sense of group
consciousness “we feeling”
The Social Construction of Minorities
• 4. Involuntary status; one is born into it
• 5. Subordinate and dominant group patterns of
interaction lead to patterns of endogamy
Defining Racism, Prejudice,
and Discrimination
• Racism - is behavior that is motivated by the
belief that one’s own group is superior to other
groups that are set apart on the basis of physical
characteristics
• Discrimination - unequal treatment because of
group membership
• Prejudice - prejudged negative attitude or opinion
about a group without bothering to verify the
merits of the opinion or judgment
Defining Racism, Prejudice,
and Discrimination
• The relationship between prejudice and
discrimination is complex
• Robert Merton’s study and typology of the
relationship between prejudice and discrimination
• Four patterns
• 1. Unprejudiced nondiscriminatory – integration
• 2. Unprejudiced and discriminatory – institutional
discrimination
Defining Racism, Prejudice,
and Discrimination
• Four patterns
• 3. Prejudiced and nondiscriminatory – latent
bigotry
• 4. Prejudiced and discriminatory – outright bigotry
Origins of Prejudice
and Discrimination
• Prejudice and Bigotry in the Individual
• Frustration-Aggression – when one feels or
experiences frustration due to blocked needs, it is
common to displace that frustration onto a
scapegoat
» Anger and frustration is often taken
out on subordinate groups
• Projection- the tendency to project one’s own
undesirable traits onto a subordinate group
Origins of Prejudice
and Discrimination
• Prejudice and Bigotry in Social Structures
• Exploitation theory - prejudice is rationally and
economically motivated on the basis of self
interest
»The dominant group benefits from
prejudice in that it is rooted within the
subordination and exploitation of a
group
Origins of Prejudice
and Discrimination
• Cultural Factors: Norms and Stereotypes
• Normative approach - prejudice is patterned into
the cultural norms and values of a group or society
• Prejudice is learned and is a function of
conforming to the norms of a group
» Homogamy - the norm that one must
marry within one’s own group
• Stereotyping - generalizing a trait to a group is
another source of prejudice
Institutional Discrimination
• Institutional discrimination stems from the
ongoing routines of societies’ social institutions such as work or education
• Institutional discrimination is different
from other types of discrimination
since it is not always a conscious
intent to discriminate
Institutional Discrimination
• Racial Profiling refers to the practice by which
law enforcement officers select people for
investigation on the basis of race
• Racial profiling is a form of institutional
discrimination in that law enforcement agencies
use race as policy for selecting someone out for
further scrutiny
Institutional Discrimination
• Education
• Minority educational achievement lags
behind the dominant group
• In 2004, about 15 percent of whites age 25
and over had not completed high school
• Forty three percent of Hispanics aged 25 and
over had not completed high school
• Twenty percent of African Americans age 25
and over had not completed high school
Institutional Discrimination
• Education
• Family income is related to educational
achievement and attainment
• A higher rate of poverty among minorities is
related to less education
Institutional Discrimination
• Unequal Access to High-Quality Schooling
• Minority segregation in poor schools
• Brown v. Board of Education and patterns of de
jure segregation
» Segregation by law or policy was
ruled unconstitutional
Institutional Discrimination
• Unequal Access to High-Quality Schooling
• De facto patterns of segregation of today
» Housing patterns
» Economic inequalities
» Gerrymandered school districts
» Middle-class flight from communities
• Busing has been the primary policy over the years
to achieve desegregation
» Primarily of minority students
Institutional Discrimination
• Harvard Project on School Desegregation has
found a pattern of resegregation of schools
• Harvard Project Findings:
• 1. Enrollment of Hispanic students have increased
by 218 percent with 75 percent attending
predominantly minority schools
• 2. Majority of white students are attending schools
that are 80 percent white
Institutional Discrimination
• Harvard Project Findings:
• 3. Enrollment for African American students has
increased but they are likely to attend
predominantly minority schools
• 4. Schools with large minority populations are
concentrated in poor areas
• 5. Poverty compounds school segregation
Institutional Discrimination
• Housing
• Housing segregation is related
» Poverty
» Prejudice
» Racial steering by real estate brokers
• Ways to reduce housing segregation
» Conduct audit research on practices
that cause segregation
» More enforcement of anti-bias
legislation
Institutional Discrimination
• Employment and Income
• Employment discrimination in part is related to
past educational discrimination
• Labor unions have also been a source of
employment discrimination
» Restricted minority membership in the
past
» Insensitive to minority members
Institutional Discrimination
•
•
•
•
Employment and Income
Income gap has been narrowing
Asset gap has been widening
William J. Wilson - the growing gap between the
middle-class and poor is widening
» Decline in manufacturing jobs for
inner city residents
» Inadequate schools
» Racist employers
Institutional Discrimination
•
•
•
•
•
•
Justice
Two premises of the American justice system
1. Justice is blind
2. Innocent until proven guilty
These two premises fall short:
1. Higher arrest rates of minorities
» Function in part of the higher arrest
rate among the poor
• 2. Bail system and inequality in accessing the
system
Institutional Discrimination
• Justice
• These two premises fall short:
• 3. Inequality in administering justice
» Sentencing and employment
discrimination
» Death penalty and the race of the
victim
Institutional Discrimination
• Political Discrimination
• Members of minority groups are
systematically courted by politicians, but political
discrimination is found throughout the United
States
• Felony Disenfranchisement
• In many states, people convicted of a felony
may lose the right to vote.
Institutional Discrimination
• Anti-Voter Fraud Campaigns
• Civil rights groups note that recent state and
federal efforts to investigate voter fraud and
institute new systems of voter identification can be
seen as attempts to block higher minority voter
turnouts.
Some Consequences of Prejudice
and Discrimination
• 1. Prejudice and discrimination have harmful
effects on the personality of its victims
• 2. Prejudice and discrimination are sources of
strife and conflict between groups
• 3. Prejudice and discrimination and subtle racism
are directed toward upper-class minorities
• 4. Hate crimes
Social Policy
• Job Training
• Government budget concerns, corporate
downsizing will make job training programs a
issue
• Affirmative Action
• Originated out of the 1964 civil rights legislation
prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion,
national origin, race and sex
Social Policy
• Affirmative Action
• Affirmative action requires educational and
economic organizations to have programs to
increase the hiring of minority applicants and
promotion policies
• California (1996) and Proposition 209 it
eliminated Affirmative action in higher education
and government jobs
» Decline in minority enrollment in
higher education
Social Policy
• Affirmative Action
• Critics argue affirmative action is a form of
reverse discrimination
• Affirmative action will continue to be an area of
controversy
• Education for Equality
• Enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation in
education
Social Policy
• Education for Equality
• Head Start – federally-funded preschool program
and nutrition program for children from poor
families
• Flaws in the Head Start program
• 1.What should be taught
• 2. Does too little, too late
Social Policy
• Future Prospects
• Continued struggles to maintain the gains over the
years
» Job market
» Affirmative action
» Educational equality