Which techinques, methodologies,... do you use to promote communication free of prejudices in your class?
Causes of Prejudice
The term prejudice means "prejudgment." A person is prejudiced when he has formed an attitude toward a particular social group of people before having enough information on which to form a knowledgeable opinion. A negative prejudice is when the attitude is hostile toward members of a group. A positive prejudice is when the attitude is unduly favorable toward a group. Groups that are the targets of prejudice may be distinguished by any one of several characteristics such as religion, ethnicity, language, social class, gender, physical abilities, age, or sexual orientation. Frequently they are distinguished by specific inherited physical characteristics such as skin color.
Prejudice is such a basic part of a person's complex thought process that any one of many causes may be a factor, such as a person's appearance, unfamiliar social customs of others, or even the type of motor vehicle a person drives. As noted by Gordon Allport in his landmark book, The Nature of Prejudice, it is more likely that multiple causes of prejudice may be involved at the same time. In addition, prejudice exists not only at the personal individual level, but also at the collective societal level. All human societies have prejudice in some form and to some degree. In fact many societies have multiple prejudices, such as gender prejudice against female members, racial prejudice against people of color, and religious prejudice against Catholics or Jews.
As there are many causes of prejudice, there can be many forms of prejudicial expression, the most common of which is discrimination. Discrimination is the unfair treatment of people simply because they are different from the dominant group in society. An example would be a person, group, or company favoring one person over another on some arbitrary basis, such as gender or social class (groups of people sharing similar wealth and social standing), rather than on individual merit. Prejudice and discrimination cause inequality, another phenomenon common to all societies, especially when minorities, such as people of color, including Hispanic and black Americans, may be readily identified. Racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism (hostility toward Jews as a religious or ethnic group) are all forms of prejudice and discrimination.
The first prejudices in human history perhaps resulted from a fear of strangers or feelings of superiority over others. As societies became more complex, due to an increase in population and in the ways to group people, such as through social classes and multiple ethnic groups, prejudices also became more complex. Because prejudice frequently involves multiple factors both at the individual and group levels, determining the cause of prejudice in any single person is difficult. Most people do not willingly reveal their prejudices or the reasons for them, if they are even aware of their prejudices at all. Some people may have become prejudiced through some traumatic event they experienced in their lives. Others are simply conforming to the society in which they live, expressing the same prejudices as parents, popular political leaders, or employers. Regardless of the cause of a person's prejudice, stereotypes, oversimplified opinions of others (see box), are usually involved.
WORDS TO KNOW
attitude:A mental position regarding a particular fact or topic.
bias:A personal judgment, often unreasoned and prejudiced outlook.
discrimination:Unfair treatment based on arbitrary standards or criteria
emotion:A strong mental reaction to something, often causing sudden behavioral changes.
prejudice:An adverse opinion, often accompanied by irrational suspicion or hatred, formed towards a particular race, religion, or group.
socialization:The process by which a culture is learned, usually through the influences a youth experiences while growing up.
What prejudice means
To understand what causes prejudice, one must first have a grasp of the concept of prejudice. Prejudice has much the same meaning as bias. It is not just an emotion or feeling, a habit or personality trait. It is more an attitude that has been influenced by family, friends, church groups, and first-hand experiences. Humans are not born prejudiced, yet they often cultivate one form of it or another at a very early age. A prejudiced person assumes that one group, usually his own, is superior in some way to another group. A person often forms prejudices in his mind before ever meeting someone representing the group against which the person is prejudiced. In racial prejudice, the groups are defined solely by skin color. In social class prejudice, the groups are defined primarily by the part of town or area in which they live. As the person grows older, the prejudice often becomes a well-established part of his inner psychological self. It becomes an inflexible generalization about others that is difficult to change once established. These generalizations are normally hastily made. Any evidence that the assumptions about another group may be wrong, such as a female college student excelling in engineering studies, is simply considered an isolated exception.
Stereotyping
Prejudice obscures the complexity of the human experience because the person with prejudices simplifies the diversity of life found in a single society or throughout the world. A major misleading notion of prejudice is that members of a group considered a minority in some way are also majorities in other ways. They may actually share more similarities than differences with the dominant group. These simplified prejudgments of people lead to the formation of stereotypes. Stereotypes are largely taught through the socialization process by family, schools, and media such as books, television, and newspapers.
The origin of stereotyping often comes from stress. Stress causes people to view things simplistically in order to cope with the situation and seek attainable solutions. For example, in a border war between two nations, the people of one nation will view members of the other nation as strongly possessing negative traits in order to go into combat and try to kill them.
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