Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism
Three Tools of Dominance That Enable Subordination in Cultures Today
Jun 16, 2009
Dominant groups in a society will regularly use tools in order to gain further advantages in order to keep a distance between themselves and subordinate groups so as to maintain their place in the hierarchy of their territory. These tools are being used in every nation around the world.
Prejudice – Negative Ideas
Prejudices are the compilation of less-than-favorable ideas held by one group about another. The thoughts can come together to form a way of thinking that leads toward racism, or they can be applied in an unsystematic method to suit the convenience of any group that wishes to maltreat another.
Ideas surrounding prejudice can include statistics, such as that of the US prison population having a high percentage of blacks. Armed with this statistic, white, Asian, Latino, or black people could conclude that they should be more wary around blacks, often searching for proof to validate such beliefs, allowing for exceptional treatment based upon them.
Discrimination – Actions Justified by Prejudice
The actions that result from prejudice are varying methods of discrimination. They can include avoidance, such as is done with the drawing of some county lines or school zones, or through denial, threats, or physical attacks, all of which are currently being practiced in the nation of Burma.
Currently, in Burma, citizens are not allowed to vote. Additionally, is has been said that groups not considered to be Burmese have been, or are being, cleansed by the governing military, or junta. These groups recently included the Karen and the Shan when reports in 2007 had shown through satellite imagery that these groups were being deterred from their villages through random mortar fire on their land.
One Shan territory that had had 20 buildings in 2000 was found to have had none in February, 2007.
Racism – an Ideology With Three Ideas
Racism is a way of life for many. Burma alone can prove that. But most people do not fully understand what racism is.
Racism is a belief system centered around three key points:
- People are naturally separated into different groups.
- The physical characteristics that make people different are not skin deep, but reach down into their core, exposing their soul.
- The differences between each group cannot change as they are inherited.
The result of these beliefs is that some groups are better than others. White supremacists believe that they must exercise power over other groups to teach them that the power is in their hands alone just as the Sunni extremist group Al-Qaeda operates with the motivation to free Muslim nations from the influence of the Christian-Jewish alliance they believe to be conspiring to destroy them.
What it comes down to is that there is a war in the world. The weapons are many, and the tools of hate, violence, and inhumanity that lead to their use are prejudice, discrimination, and racism.
Additional Sources
Marger, Martin N. 2009. Race and Ethnic Relations, 8th Ed. Belmont, CA. Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Duckitt, John. 1992. The Social Psychology of Prejudice. New York, NY. Praeger.
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