This document discusses prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes. It defines prejudice as negative beliefs or feelings toward a group that are resistant to reason. Discrimination refers to unequal treatment based on group membership. Stereotypes are overgeneralized beliefs that are used to justify prejudice. Examples of common racial stereotypes that have been used historically in the US to degrade and oppress black people are discussed, such as Mammy, Jezebel, Brute, Pickaninny, and Uncle Tom. The psychological causes and functions of prejudice are also examined.

1. Prejudice & Discrimination

2. Prejudice
• Latin praejūdicium a “preceding judgment,
disadvantage”
• Literal definition misleading, why?
• Prejudice often arises after groups come into
contact and had some knowledge of one another
• Wirth “an attitude with an emotional bias”
• Because feelings shape our attitudes they reduce
our receptivity to additional information that may
alter those attitudes.

3. Resistant to Rational Influence
• Ralph Rosnow: to
encompass “any
unreasonable attitude
that is usually
resistant to rational
influence.”
• Working Definition:
“Negative beliefs,
feelings, and action-
orientations
regarding a certain
group or groups of
peoples

4. Example Dialogue
• Mr. X: The trouble with the Jews is they only take care of their
own group.
• Mr. Y: But the community Chest campaign shows that they
gave more generously in proportion to their numbers, to the
general charities of the community, than did the nonjews.
• Mr. X: That shows they are always trying to buy favor and
intrude into Christian affairs. They think of nothing but money;
that is why there are so many Jewish bankers.
• Mr. Y: But a recent study shows that the percentage of Jews
in the banking business is negligible, far smaller than the
percentage of non-Jews.
• MR. S: That’s just it, they don’t go for respectable business;
they are only in the movie business or run night clubs.

5. U.S. Propaganda

6. Nazi Depictions of Jewish
people

7. Discrimination
• The actual
behavior, the
practice of
differential and
unequal treatment of
other groups of
people, usually along
racial, religious, or
ethnic lines.
• Latin discriminatus
“to divide or
distiguish”

8. De facto and De Jure segregation
• De facto “in practice”
segregation that
becomes embedded in
social customs and
institutions
– The Segregation of the
Milwaukee Nightlife
• De Jure Segregation -
“by law” segregation
that is licensed by law
– Jim Crowe in the South,
and the Slave Codes

9. Institutional Discrimination
The unequal treatment of subordinate groups inherent in
the ongoing operations of societies institutions.
Entrenched in customs, laws, and practices
Examples, banking rejecting minority mortgage applications
criminal sentencing inequities in the criminal justice system
higher unemployment of minorities

10. Psychology of Prejudice
• Three Levels, Cognitive, emotional
and action orientation
• Cognitive: encompasses a person’s
beliefs and perceptions of a group
as threatening, nonthreatening,
unequal or equal
• In many societies, members of the
majority group may believe that a
particular low-status group is dirty
immoral violent or law breaking.

11. Cognitive Level
• Thomas Jefferson On Slavery, from Notes
on Virginia

12. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia
• They seem to require less sleep. A black after hard labour
through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements
to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out
with the first dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave,
and more adventuresome. But this may perhaps proceed from
a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till
it be present..- When present, they do not go through it with
more coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more
ardent after their female: but love seems with them to be more
an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment
and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless
afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given
life to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner
forgotten with them.

13. Emotional Level
• The emotional level
represents a more
intense stage of
personal involvement.
The emotional
attitudes may be
negative or positive,
such as fear/envy,
distrust/trust,
disgust/admiration, or
contempt/empathy.
• George Wallace
“Segregation Forever
Speech”
• http://www.youtube.com/w

14. Action-Orientation
• positive or negative predisposition of group leads
an individual to act
• Leads to ethnoviolence, acts of violence
members of disliked groups
– Hate crimes such as lynchings

15. Self Justification
• Involves denigrating a
person or group to justify
maltreatment of them.
• We are not rational
creatures, but
rationalizing creatures!
• We require reassurance
that the things we do and
the lives we live are
proper and that good
reasons for our actions
exist.

16. Causes for Prejudice
• Authoritarian Personality
– Individual received harsh
treatment from parents as
a child
– love withheld if the child
does not respond with
weakness and submission
– Demonstrate displaced
aggression directing their
hostility against a
powerless group to
compensate for their
feelings of insecurity and
fear

17. Frustration
• a result of a lack of
resources or rewards,
in one’s standard of
living in comparison
with social norms.
• Frustrated people seek
to strike out against
the perceived cause of
their deprivation.
• Often times they can’t
against the true source,
and target powerless
minority groups
instead.

18. Scapegoating
• Blaming others for
something that is not their
fault
• 1. highly visible in
physical appearance
• 2 not strong enough to
strike back
• 3. situated within easy
access of the dominant
group
• 4. a past target of
hostility for whom latent
hostility still exists
• 5. The symbol of an
unpopular concept

19. Ethnophaulisms
– A derogatory word or
expression used to
describe a racial or
ethnic group
– This is the language
of prejudice,
– the verbal picture of
a negative stereotype
that reflects the
prejudice and bigotry
of a society’s past and
present.
– Majority and minority
groups both use
ethnophaulisms to
degrade outsiders
– Emotional power of
such labels has the
effect of reducing
people to a less-than
human abstraction.

20. Three Types
• 1. Disparaging
Names (chink, dago
polack, honky)
• 2. Alleged Physical
Characteristics or
foods (darky, potato
eater, frogs)
• 3. Alleged
Behaviors- “Jew
him down”, “Indian
giver” Vincent Van Gough’s Potato
Eaters

21. Power of Stereotypes
• These types of stereotypical images are
deeply ambivalent - they are both comforting
and threatening to the white observer.
• they provide a series of convenient roles for
the white representation of black people. All
of them play into white fantasies of moral,
spiritual and mental superiority.
• These stereotypes are replicated in
contemporary contexts

22. The ‘Uncle Tom’
• Humiliatingly subservient,
loyal but stupid
• Childlike, unthinking and
fearful
• The ‘good servant’
• In some African American
communities "Uncle Tom" is
a slur used to disparage a
Black person who is
humiliatingly subservient or
deferential to White people.

23. The ‘Coon’ Caricature
• Derived from raccoon,
depicts Black men as a
lazy man-child.
• The Coon defends
slavery, he is to blame
for his position.

24. The ‘Pickaninny’ caricature.
• Pickaninnies portrayed with
bulging eyes, wild hair, red
lips, and wide mouths into
which they stuffed huge
slices of watermelon.
• routinely shown on
postcards, posters, and
matchboxes being chased
or eaten
• portrayed as buffoons
often running from
alligators and toward fried
chicken.

25. Pikaninny

26. Uncle Remus
• harmless, friendly
stereotype, given to
'quaint, naive and
comic philosophising'

27. The ‘Mammy’
• The Mammy is
nurturing and
protective of "her"
white family, while
neglecting her own
children.
• Self-sacrificing, fat,
asexual, good-
humored, a loyal cook
and housekeeper
• Defense of slavery, the
Mammy liked her
position, preferred her
white family over her
own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ7r2OV

28. Mammy

29. ‘The Brute’
• Portrays Black men as
savage, animalistic,
destructive, and criminal
• Black men are depicted as
hideous, terrifying predators
who target helpless victims,
generally white women
• "A bad negro is the most
horrible creature upon the
earth, the most brutal and
merciless." (Charles Smith
1897)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn

30. The ‘Jezebel’
• Promiscuous and
predatory.
• seductive, alluring, worldly,
beguiling, tempting, and
lewd.
• Used during slavery as a
rationalization for sexual
relations between White
slave owners and Black
female slaves.