Prejudice Paper Essay

Through our own personal experience, Professor McAuliff would like us to use the topics we discussed throughout the semester to show an understanding of the concepts. Using my experience with prejudice I will be providing how what I learned in the social psychology textbook. Prejudice has been a very relevant topic I have related with throughout my life. In addition to reading and thinking about the concepts covered in the text, an important part of the learning process includes applying these concepts to your own life and experiences. Prejudice is a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members (Myers). Prejudice is an attitude essentially that can be either positive or negative judgments. More than likely the prejudice someone is faced with is negative. Being that it is an attitude you also have to know about the ABC’s of attitudes. A is for the affect or feelings. B is for the behavior tendency or inclination to act. And C is for the cognitions or beliefs. They also help tie into stereotypes and discrimination. Stereotypes is a negative evaluation in which you generalize the personal attributes of a group. Discrimination is an unjustified behavior toward ones group. Whether it is conscious or automatic prejudice is your quick response to associations. â€Å"Although our [conscious] minds are in the right places and we may truly believe we are not prejudiced, our hearts aren’t quite there yet† (John Dovido, Time, 2009). With so many races in the world, it is often easy to see how quickly we are to label one another. Racial prejudice is Sco? 1 prime example of people labeled what a person should be. It goes far beyond enough for racial prejudice within the same groups some identify themselves with. People tend to point out what is wrong in their group before they admit their wrongs. In some groups you have anti- whatever the group is because a hatred developed from society. Prejudice is spread out throughout the world. Not strictly a racial epidemic it can be anything from youth disliking the elderly to genders disliking genders. It affects everyone the same especially from the negative side. When it is automatic your unconscious associations can be influenced by perceptions and reactions you have. Especially for gender prejudice, the gender role norms come into play. People have ideas on how men and women ought to behave. Often prejudice and stereotype do get confused in this area. Stereotypes only support prejudice beliefs and attitudes are separate. With more separation prejudice has social inequalities. They allow for one group to seek dominance over the other. Making groups break off into a particular status. Creating this social hierarchy that can create hostility amongst groups. Status is looked the most in regards to the negative feeling that appear in prejudice socially. Rich versus the poor is the most common social dominance orientation. The fact of the matter is people want to be on top of the hierarchy. Prejudice coming in so many forms is easy to grasp the idea of it being everywhere. Nothing beats facing prejudice for the first time. As an African American male I have been faced with plenty of different forms of prejudice. I can recall being discriminated against just for being not only black but intelligent within my own group of black people. My very own cousin would tease me and call me a â€Å"white boy†, which I am clearly not, because I was interested in school. I was the first of many of my cousins to graduate high school and instead of being proud me they would tell me I was uppity or not black enough for them. It is very hard when your very own Sco? 2 family doesn’t expect you. I wanted some much to conform to what they did but I wasn’t thety pe of person who wanted to live a life. My cousins definitely are your stereotypical black people. I have found myself in a different social class than them just because I have worked harder than they have to be something more than someone running the streets. I can agree with racial prejudice the author discusses in the textbook because it has yet to die out. However racial prejudice in the black community in my opinion is at an all-time high and very prevalent. Though we have changed since the 1940’s the anti-black prejudices haven’t. Social dominance is felt whether if it is whites being above blacks or other blacks be above other blacks. Prime example is how black rappers spend their money on material items instead of investing or saving just to compete with who have more money or more material items than they do. â€Å"†What you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond chain? All you blacks want all the same things†, a line from Kanye West’s song New Slaves. He plays off of the typical stereotypes imposed on the black community, usually considered as hood dreams. Condescendingly, he uses the term â€Å"blacks† as a euphemism and expands on this idea when he says â€Å"I know that we the new slaves† (rapgenius. com, Kanye West, 2013). Prejudice exists in our unconscious and conscious forms. It is a preconceived negative attitude that can affect some of our beliefs. It can arise in a social sources and lead people to split in groups. â€Å"Unequal status breeds prejudice† (Myers). Whether it is implicit or explicit all prejudice can mirrored from group to group. It may be a subtle action, but the small action that creates the worst problems. References Dovidio, John (2009). Prejudice Researcher. TIME. Sco? 3 Myers, D. G. (2013). Social Psychology (11th Ed. ). New York: McGraw-Hill. RapGenius. com (2013). Kanye West- New Slave Lyrics Sco? 4.