Prejudice refers to the beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes someone holds about a group. A prejudice is not based on experience; instead, it is a prejudgment, originating outside actual experience. Prejudice may be based on a person's political affiliation, sex, gender, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, language, nationality, criminal background, wealth, race, ethnicity, or other personal characteristic. The discussion in this section will largely focus on racial prejudice.
The 1970 documentary, Eye of the Storm, illustrates the way in which prejudice develops, by showing how defining one category of people as superior (children with blue eyes) results in prejudice against people who are not part of the favored category; Jane Elliot, then a 3rd grade teacher, conducted her "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise to give her students a difficult, hands-on experience with prejudice and discrimination.
Stereotypes
Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people in which prejudice is often based on. Stereotypes can be associated with race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation—almost any characteristic. They may be positive (usually about one’s own group, such as when women suggest they are less likely to complain about physical pain) but are often negative (usually toward other groups, such as when members of a dominant racial group suggest that a subordinate racial group is stupid or lazy). In either case, the stereotype is a generalization that doesn’t take individual differences into account.
Where do stereotypes come from? In fact new stereotypes are rarely created; rather, they are recycled from subordinate groups that have assimilated into society and are reused to describe newly subordinate groups. For example, many stereotypes that are currently used to characterize Black people were used earlier in American history to characterize Irish and Eastern European immigrants. While cultural and other differences do exist among the various American racial and ethnic groups, many of the views we have of such groups are unfounded and hence are stereotypes. An example of the stereotypes that White people have of other groups appears in Figure 4.2.1 "Perceptions by Non-Latino White Respondents of the Intelligence of White and Black Americans", in which White respondents in the General Social Survey (GSS), a recurring survey of a random sample of the US population, are less likely to think Blacks are intelligent than they are to think Whites are intelligent.
Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Perceptions by Non-Latino White Respondents of the Intelligence of White and Black Americans. (CC BY 2.0; Data from General Social Survey)
Stereotypes of Latinx Population
Often exhibited in negative caricatures or terms, stereotypical representation of Hispanic and Latino/a characters are typically negatively presented and attack the entire ethnic group's morality, work ethic, intelligence, or dignity. Even in non-fiction media, such as news outlets, Hispanics are usually reported on in crime, immigration, or drug-related stories than in accomplishments. The stereotypes can also differ between men and women. Hispanic or Latino men are more likely to be stereotyped as unintelligent, comedic, aggressive, sexual, and unprofessional, earning them titles as "Latin lovers," buffoons, or criminals. That often results in the individuals being characterized as working less-respectable careers, being involved in crimes (often drug-related), or being uneducated immigrants. Hispanic characters are more likely than non-Hispanic White characters to possess lower-status occupations, such as domestic workers, or be involved in drug-related crimes. Hispanic and Latina women, similarly, are typically portrayed as lazy, verbally aggressive, and lacking work ethic. The stereotypes are furthered in pseudo-autobiographical characters like George Lopez, who lacks higher education and is written around humor, and Sofia Vergara, who is portrayed as an immigrant woman marrying a rich man and is often mocked for her loud and aggressive voice.
A very common stereotype, as well as mentality, is that all Hispanic/Latino individuals have the same ethnic background, race, and culture but there are really numerous subgroups, with unique identities. Americans tend to explain all of Latin America in terms of the nationalities or countries that they know. For instance, in the Midwest and the Southwest, Latin Americans are largely perceived as Mexicans, but in the East, particularly in the New York and Boston areas, people consider Latin Americans through their limited interactions with Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. In Miami, Cubans and Central Americans are the reference group for interpreting Latin America. The idea of homogeneity is so extensive in US society that even important politicians tend to treat Latin America as a culturally-unified region. Hispanic/Latino Americans become a homogenous group, instead of their actual individual cultures, qualities, and differences.
Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States
Stereotypes of East Asians, like other ethnic stereotypes, are often portrayed in the mainstream media, cinema, music, television, literature, internet, and other forms of creative expression in American culture and society.
Fictional stereotypes include Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan (representing a threatening, mysterious Asian character and an apologetic, submissive, "good" East Asian character). Asian men may be depicted as misogynistic predators, especially in WW II-era propaganda. East Asian women have been portrayed as aggressive or opportunistic sexual beings or predatory gold diggers, or as cunning "Dragon Ladies." This contrasts with the other stereotypes of servile "Lotus Blossom Babies", "China dolls", "Geisha girls", or prostitutes. Strong women may be stereotyped as Tiger Moms, and both men and women may be depicted as a model minority, with career success.
Stereotypes of Indigenous peoples
Worldwide stereotypes of Indigenous peoples include historical misrepresentations and the oversimplification of hundreds of Indigenous cultures. Negative stereotypes are associated with prejudice and discrimination that continue to impact the lives of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples of the Americas are commonly called Native Americans (United States excluding Alaska and Hawaii), Alaska Natives, or First Nations people (in Canada). The Circumpolar peoples, often referred to by the English term Eskimo, have a distinct set of stereotypes. Eskimo itself is an exonym, deriving from phrases that Algonquin tribes used for their northern neighbors. It is believed that some portrayals of natives, such as their depiction as bloodthirsty savages have disappeared. However, most portrayals are oversimplified and inaccurate; these stereotypes are found particularly in popular media which is the main source of mainstream images of Indigenous peoples worldwide.
The stereotyping of American Indians must be understood in the context of history which includes conquest, forced displacement, and organized efforts to eradicate native cultures, such as the boarding schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which separated young Native Americans from their families in order to educate and to assimilate them as European Americans.
Stereotypes of African Americans
Dating back to the period of African enslavement during the colonial era, stereotypes of African Americans are largely connected to the persistent racism and discrimination they faced while residing in the United States. Nineteenth-century minstrel shows used White actors in blackface and attire supposedly worn by African-Americans to lampoon and disparage Blacks. Some nineteenth century stereotypes, such as the sambo, are now considered to be derogatory and racist. The "Mandingo" and "Jezebel" stereotypes sexualizes African-Americans as hypersexual. The Mammy archetype depicts a motherly Black woman who is dedicated to her role working for a White family, a stereotype which dates back to Southern plantations. African-Americans are often stereotyped to have an unusual appetite for fried chicken.
In the 1980s and following decades, emerging stereotypes of Black men depicted them as drug dealers, crack addicts, hobos, and subway muggers. Jesse Jackson said media portray blacks as less intelligent. The magical Negro is a stock character who is depicted as having special insight or powers, and has been depicted (and criticized) in American cinema. Stereotypes of Black women include being depicted as welfare queens or as angry Black women who are loud, aggressive, demanding, and rude.
Correlates of Prejudice
Since the 1940s, social scientists have investigated the individual correlates of racial and ethnic prejudice (Stangor, 2009). These correlates help test the theories of prejudice just presented. For example, if authoritarian personalities do produce prejudice, then people with these personalities should be more prejudiced. If frustration also produces prejudice, then people who are frustrated with aspects of their lives should also be more prejudiced. Other correlates that have been studied include age, education, gender, region of country, race, residence in integrated neighborhoods, and religiosity. We can take time here to focus on gender, education, and region of country and discuss the evidence for the racial attitudes of Whites, as most studies do in view of the historic dominance of Whites in the United States.
The findings on gender are rather surprising. Although women are usually thought to be more empathetic than men and thus to be less likely to be racially prejudiced, recent research indicates that the racial views of (White) women and men are in fact very similar and that the two genders are about equally prejudiced (Hughes & Tuch, 2003). This similarity supports group threat theory, outlined earlier, in that it indicates that White women and men are responding more as Whites than as women or men, respectively, in formulating their racial views.
Findings on education and region of country are not surprising. Focusing again just on Whites, less educated people are usually more racially prejudiced than better-educated people, and Southerners are usually more prejudiced than non-Southerners (Krysan, 2000). Evidence of these differences appears in Figure 4.2.7, which depicts educational and regional differences in a type of racial prejudice that social scientists call social distance, or feelings about interacting with members of other races and ethnicities. The General Social Survey asks respondents how they feel about a “close relative” marrying an African American. Figure 4.2.7 shows how responses by White (non-Latino) respondents to this question vary by education and by Southern residence. Whites without a high school degree are much more likely than those with more education to oppose these marriages, and Whites in the South are also much more likely than their non-Southern counterparts to oppose them. To recall the sociological perspective, our social backgrounds certainly do seem to affect our attitudes.
Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Education, Region, and Opposition by Non-Latino Whites to a Close Relative Marrying an African American (CC BY 2.0; Data from General Social Survey)
Social-Psychological Explanations of Prejudice
Where does racial and ethnic prejudice come from? Why are some people more prejudiced than others? Scholars have tried to answer these questions at least since the 1940s, when the horrors of Nazism were still fresh in people’s minds. Theories of prejudice fall into two camps, social-psychological and sociological. We will look at social-psychological explanations first and then turn to sociological explanations. We will also discuss distorted mass media treatment of various racial and ethnic groups.
One of the first social-psychological explanations of prejudice centered on the authoritarian personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). According to this view, authoritarian personalities develop in childhood in response to parents who practice harsh discipline. Individuals with authoritarian personalities emphasize such things as obedience to authority, a rigid adherence to rules, and low acceptance of people (out-groups) not like oneself. Many studies find strong racial and ethnic prejudice among such individuals (Sibley & Duckitt, 2008). But whether their prejudice stems from their authoritarian personalities or instead from the fact that their parents were probably prejudiced themselves remains an important question.
Another early and still popular social-psychological explanation is called frustration theory (or scapegoat theory) (Dollard, Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). In this view individuals with various problems become frustrated and tend to blame their troubles on groups that are often disliked in the real world (e.g., racial, ethnic, and religious minorities). These minorities are thus scapegoats for the real sources of people’s misfortunes. Several psychology experiments find that when people are frustrated, they indeed become more prejudiced. In one early experiment, college students who were purposely not given enough time to solve a puzzle were more prejudiced after the experiment than before it (Cowen, Landes, & Schaet, 1959).
Sociological Explanations of Prejudice
One popular sociological explanation emphasizes conformity and socialization and is called social learning theory. In this view, people who are prejudiced are merely conforming to the culture in which they grow up, and prejudice is the result of socialization from parents, peers, the news media, and other various aspects of their culture. Supporting this view, studies have found that people tend to become more prejudiced when they move to areas where people are very prejudiced and less prejudiced when they move to locations where people are less prejudiced (Aronson, 2008). If people in the South today continue to be more prejudiced than those outside the South, as we discuss later, even though legal segregation ended more than four decades ago, the influence of their culture on their socialization may help explain these beliefs.
The mass media plays a key role in how many people learn to be prejudiced. This type of learning happens because the media often present people of color in a negative light. By doing so, the media unwittingly reinforce the prejudice that individuals already have or even increase their prejudice (Larson, 2005). Examples of distorted media coverage abound. Even though poor people are more likely to be White than any other race or ethnicity, the news media use pictures of African Americans far more often than those of Whites in stories about poverty. In one study, national news magazines, such as Time and Newsweek, and television news shows portrayed African Americans in almost two-thirds of their stories on poverty, even though only about one-fourth of poor people are African Americans. In the magazine stories, only 12 percent of the African Americans had a job, even though in the real world more than 40 percent of poor African Americans were working at the time the stories were written (Gilens, 1996). In a Chicago study, television news shows there depicted Whites fourteen times more often in stories of good Samaritans, even though Whites and African Americans live in Chicago in roughly equal numbers (Entman & Rojecki, 2001). Many other studies find that newspaper and television stories about crime and drugs feature higher proportions of African Americans as offenders than is true in arrest statistics (Surette, 2011). Studies like these show that the news media “convey the message that Black people are violent, lazy, and less civic minded” (Jackson, 1997, p. A27).
A second sociological explanation emphasizes economic and political competition and is commonly called group threat theory (Quillian, 2006). In this view, prejudice arises from competition over jobs and other resources and from disagreement over various political issues. When groups vie with each other over these matters, they often become hostile toward each other. Amid such hostility, it is easy to become prejudiced toward the group that threatens your economic or political standing. A popular version of this basic explanation is Susan Olzak’s (1992) ethnic competition theory which holds that ethnic prejudice and conflict increase when two or more ethnic groups find themselves competing for jobs, housing, and other goals.
The competition explanation is the macro equivalent of the frustration/scapegoat theory already discussed. Much of the White mob violence discussed earlier stemmed from Whites’ concern that the groups they attacked threatened their jobs and other aspects of their lives. Thus lynchings of African Americans in the South increased when the Southern economy worsened and decreased when the economy improved (Tolnay & Beck, 1995). Similarly, White mob violence against Chinese immigrants in the 1870s began after the railroad construction that employed so many Chinese immigrants slowed and the Chinese began looking for work in other industries. Whites feared that the Chinese would take jobs away from White workers and that their large supply of labor would drive down wages. Their assaults on the Chinese killed several people and prompted the passage by Congress of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 that prohibited Chinese immigration (Dinnerstein & Reimers, 2009).
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