Prejudice and discrimination are the roots of human atrocities because they facilitate immorality and breed hatred between strangers and people who do not know anything about one another. Prejudice and discrimination arise due to human differences and social identities that enable individuals to coalesce into groups that share similarities. Some individuals champion these vices by proposing that they help enrich cultures and protect communities. Nevertheless, the notions that particular races or cultural groups are better than others introduce extreme setbacks to human relations and encourage more powerful factions to harm and take advantage of others. Thus, investigating the roots of prejudice and discrimination can help sociologists and researchers to recommend better solutions to prevent its advancement.
Prejudice and discrimination are societal issues that have led to several conflicts and reduced developments toward a sustainable future. Although some groups of individuals experience severe injustice due to their differences, Brandt & Crawford (2019) suggest that prejudice is expressed toward various heterogeneous target groups. The authors propose that prejudice is a subject of consistent and inconsistent predictors associated with the groups. Consistent predictors of prejudice include worldview conflicts, perceived threats, agreeableness, and obedience to authority. Inconsistent predictors are religion, political ideologies, cognitive ability, fundamentalism, and conventional values (Brandt & Crawford, 2019). Moreover, individuals suffer from discrimination due to their social status, memberships, and prejudice acceptability. Thus, considering these factors can help understand the roots of prejudice and guide better decision-making toward its abolition.
Discrimination and prejudice are closely associated with racism because the concept of racial superiority justifies the unfair treatment of others. Historically, race was used to identify individual groups and societies according to their physical differences. Nevertheless, Americans and Europeans took advantage of destructive racial ideologies to support their heinous acts against African Americans and strategies toward world domination (Baldwin, 2017). In the modern world, marginalized racial groups in the US experience severe atrocities due to inequality, unequal resource distribution, and government negligence, thus paving the way for high rates of crime, disease, and social problems (Lund, E. M. (2021). Subsequently, prejudice and discrimination result in several issues that limit marginalized groups from thriving, including shame, low self-esteem, stress, and deteriorating health.
Several factors contribute to the prevalence of prejudice and discrimination in society. (Baldwin, 2017) suggests that political leaders contribute to disparities because they often neglect their responsibilities to individuals and neglect human affairs. An increasing wealth gap is also a contributor to prejudice and discrimination because a few wealthy individuals have access to unlimited resources while people living in poverty lack basic supplies to survive. On a broader scale, technological solutions such as social media facilitate increased prejudice due to their ability to spread information to individuals (Croucher et al., 2020). For example, during the wake of the Coronavirus, Chinese individuals in the US experienced high levels of prejudice and discrimination due to the news that the virus originated in Wuhan, China. Thus, addressing the implications of facilitators can allow decision-makers to make changes where necessary.
Issues and Controversies in Prejudice and Discrimination in the US
Over the past centuries, various scholars have developed theories to justify prejudice and discrimination. For example, politicians in the 19th and 20th centuries proposed that the US was destined to rule over other nations. In the modern era, individuals justify their prejudice based on perceive threats (Bahns, 2017). In other words, prejudice results from perceiving an unfamiliar group of individuals as threatening. As a result, it allows particular groups to thrive and avoid diversities of influence from external interests that can impede their development (Bahns, 2017). Nevertheless, information about the potential threats of others can be conditioned, resulting in undesirable outcomes as witnessed in the current US society.
However, most sociologists oppose that prejudice and discrimination have benefits in human society because of their far-reaching implications. Lund (2021) suggests that children learn from their environment and are exposed to various forms of prejudice and acts of discrimination that allow them to emulate negative behaviors. As a result, they grow up believing that people are different depending on their physical attributes and cultures. Thus, prejudice and discrimination are impossible to eradicate without comprehensively altering individuals’ perceptions of each other and their behaviors (Lund, 2021). Even so, these forms of immorality affect individuals across generations because it increases health disparities, economic burdens, and constraints that limit populations from advancing. Hence, investigating and addressing the roots of prejudice and discrimination can help policy-makers and sociologists to develop solutions to curb its advancement.
Prejudice and discrimination are vices that negatively affect the community. They interfere with individuals’ well-being, mental status, and emotional health. Moreover, they have long-term implications including shame and detachment due to stigma. Although some individuals support prejudice and discrimination due to the idea that it protects them from external threats, the history and evolution of these vices suggest that they were used to justify mistreatment and overshadow others to gain supremacy. Therefore, I still hold the view that racism and discrimination are wrongs that should be abolished from society because they do not foster cooperation between individuals, adherence to human rights, and positive developments.
References
Bahns, A. J. (2017). Threat as justification of prejudice. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(1), 52-74. Web.
Baldwin, J. (2017). Culture, prejudice, racism, and discrimination. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Web.
Brandt, M. J., & Crawford, J. T. (2019). Studying a heterogeneous array of target groups can help us understand prejudice. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28(3), 292-298. Web.
Croucher, S. M., Nguyen, T., & Rahmani, D. (2020). Prejudice toward Asian Americans in the COVID-19 pandemic: The effects of social media use in the United States. Frontiers in Communication, 5, 39. Web.
Lund, E. M. (2021). Even more to handle: Additional sources of stress and trauma for clients from marginalized racial and ethnic groups in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 34(3-4), 321-330. Web.