HSB4U Chapter 9

Prejudice and Discrimination

Systemic Discrimination

• Who, in our course so far, has experienced it?

Perception

= the process by which objects, people, events, and other aspects of our surroundings become known to us

•Kenneth Boulding– The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society,

1956• The image = people don’t perceive things as they

exist in the real world; they respond to an image of reality which differs from person to person

• Joel Barker, 1989– paradigm: = set of rules and conditions stored

in the brain that a person uses to interpret and understand sensory experiences

• Like a filter through which information is processed by the brain to create an image

Implications

• What does all this information about perception mean for our understanding of prejudice and discrimination?

Standardized Intelligence Quotient Test

• What is it?

• How is it an example of systemic discrimination?

Sample Question

• Select the most different of the set of items:– Auto, turtle, basket, bird

Improvements?

• How could tests be made fairer?– Culturally fair vs. culturally loaded?

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS

What Do You See?

Self-Esteem and the Psychology of Race

• What effect does racism have on an individual, especially a child?– Black Like Me, textbook p. 256.– The Clarks’ research used in the Brown v. Board of

Education case, 1950s– Brantford study, textbook p. 295– Joy Kogawa, Japanese-Canadian interned as a

child during WWII, A Choice of Dreams (1974)“And I prayed the God who loves

All the children in his sight

That I might be white.”

The Clarks’ Research and Segregation

‘In their groundbreaking studies, Kenneth and Mamie Clark investigated black children's racial identification and preference. Using drawings and dolls of black and white children, these researchers asked Black preschool and elementary school children to indicate which drawing or doll they preferred and which drawing or doll looked most like them. They also asked children to color line drawings of children with the color that most closely matched their own skin color. The Clarks found that Black children often preferred the white doll and drawing, and frequently colored the line drawing of the child a shade lighter than their own skin. Samples of the children's responses illustrated that they viewed white as good and pretty, but black as bad and ugly.

Clark and Clark concluded that many Black children at the time (1939-1950) "indicate a clear-cut preference for white and some of them evidence emotional conflict when requested to indicate a color preference. It is clear that the Negro child, by the age of five is aware of the fact that to be colored in contemporary American society is a mark of inferior status. A child accepts as early as six, seven or eight the negative stereotypes about his own group.“’

CNN replica experiment: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/13/doll.study/

American Psychological Association. (2007, July). Research in psychology: Segregation ruled unequal, therefore unconstitutional. Retrieved June 5, 2014 from http://www.apa.org/research/action/segregation.aspx

Early Theories of Prejudice

• Use pages 297 to 300 to fill in the information about All port and Adorno’s theories of where prejudice comes from.

Application of Theories

• Can Adorno’s theory be used to explain the prejudice in today’s four case studies? If so, how?

• Is Allport’s theory more applicable than Adorno’s? How – apply to case studies.

• What are the shared aspects of the theories?

Aboud’s More Recent Theory

• Professor at McGill University

• Social-Cognitive Theory – Incorporates the work of Piaget

and Kohlberg

Teaching Activities

Two Questions

• Has anyone ever made an incorrect assumption about you based on preconceived ideas?

• If so, what effect did it have on you?

THREE CONCEPTS OF RACE

1. Race as a Scientific Concept

• Genetically humans are 99.9% the same as each other (chimpanzees have more internal variation than us)

• A small number of genes (0.01%) relate to physical appearance - they are thought to have developed as adaptations to environment– skin colour, eye colour, nose width

• Differences in skin colour and physical appearance do not translate to a whole range of other biological differences that are unique to groups

Therefore:

Skin Colour As an Adaptation

• Adaptation to geography and sun’s ultraviolet radiation (UVR)– Dark skin is thought to protect us vs sun

damage– Pigment also helps balance the body’s need

for vitamin D and folate (UVR strips away folate)

– As people moved away from the equator, natural selection favoured light skin

Counterintuitive Example

• Native peoples of Alaska and northern Canada– High UVR from reflection of sun on snow and

ice– Dark skin protects them– Slows vitamin D production but their

traditional diet of seal, walrus, fish (all rich in vitamin D) compensates for this

2. Race as a Historical Concept

• In the past people inaccurately divided groups of people according to colour: white, yellow, red, brown, black

• Then they added geographical names: Caucasian, Oriental, Indian, Indo-Pakistani

• These designations were used for many negative purposes, such as justification of – Imperialism, slavery, natural hierarchy, war, genocide,

inequality

• Therefore:

3. Race as a Social Concept

• Race is an arbitrary categorization in which humans attach social meaning to physical differences– Social meanings such as: education, intelligence, income.

• When we assign people to groups based on skin colour or other physical features we lose information about people’s individuality

• Race is a learned concept; it is a social, economic and political construct

• However, it is important to many people who link it to their culture, identity, heritage.

• Therefore:

Follow-Up Questions

• How do you identify yourself (e.g., if you were asked to do so for the Canadian census)?

• What does your identity mean to you? How important is it to you?

Arbitrary Activities on Human Variation

1. Group people according to short, medium, tall. – Then add more people. What happens to the

original categories?

2. One person gets 89. Another person gets 91. They are only 2 marks apart but the person with the A (over 90) has a real advantage for US college admission.

3. Skin colour groupings. http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm

Debrief of Sorting Activity

• What kinds of things did you notice yourself:– thinking– saying– not wanting to say– feeling guilty or awkward about saying or

thinking

PARADIGM SHIFTUnlearning prejudice

Robbers Cave Experiment

• Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment– Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. Jack

White, William R. Hood, Carolyn W. Sherif (1954/1961)

• http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif/chap5.htm

Aronson

• Jig Saw Learning– Equal Status Social Contact– Context: newly desegregated

schools in Austin, Texas

http://www.jigsaw.org/history.htm

A Letter from CarlosAutumn, 1982Dear Professor Aronson:

I am a senior at U.T. [University of Texas]. Today I got a letter admitting me to the Harvard Law School. This may not seem odd to you, but let me tell you something. I am the 6th of 7 children my parents had--and I am the only one who ever went to college, let alone graduate, or go to law school.

By now, you are probably wondering why this stranger is writing to you and bragging to you about his achievements. Actually, I'm not a stranger although we never met. You see, last year I was taking a course in social psychology and we were using a book you wrote, The Social Animal, and when I read about prejudice and jigsaw it all sounded very familiar--and then, I realized that I was in that very first class you ever did jigsaw in--when I was in the 5th grade. And as I read on, it dawned on me that I was the boy that you called Carlos. And then I remembered you when you first came to our classroom and how I was scared and how I hated school and how I was so stupid and didn't know anything. And you came in--it all came back to me when I read your book--you were very tall--about 6 1/2 feet--and you had a big black beard and you were funny and made us all laugh.

And, most important, when we started to do work in jigsaw groups, I began to realize that I wasn't really that stupid. And the kids I thought were cruel and hostile became my friends and the teacher acted friendly and nice to me and I actually began to love school, and I began to love to learn things and now I'm about to go to Harvard Law School.

You must get a lot of letters like this but I decided to write anyway because let me tell you something. My mother tells me that when I was born I almost died. I was born at home and the cord was wrapped around my neck and the midwife gave me mouth to mouth and saved my life. If she was still alive, I would write to her too, to tell her that I grew up smart and good and I'm going to law school. But she died a few years ago. I'm writing to you because, no less than her, you saved my life too.

Sincerely,

Carlos

http://www.jigsaw.org/carlos.htm

Anti-Prejudice Education

Anti-racism Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

• Preserves __________ while sharing being Canadian

• Pride

• Prejudice can be reduced by _______ programs

• Promotes understanding of __________s

• It is only informational because

Anti-Racism

• Reduces _________ and removes ______________

• Aboud’s program in BC with grade 5 students creates ______________s between them

• Institutional barriers are

• Culture-fair testing is emphasized by

• Creates paradigm shifts by

New MC or AR statements

• Addressing prejudices through education

• Allowing people to wear religious headwear in school

• Having a literacy class instead of standardized test

• Incorporating elementary school diversity programs.

Invisible White Privilege Knapsack