Differentiate between Prejudice and Discrimination - Essay Example

For example, it is prejudicial for an individual to think that all Black individuals are violent or robbers, or that all Jewish people are money-oriented. Another example of prejudice is a negative attitude that stems out of a person’s sex race (sexism) or race (racism). Prejudice is usually just a type of stereotype, and turns into discrimination when the attitudes are turned into actions. This implies that discrimination is an action that stems out of a person’s prejudice, for example, based on the societal class that an individual belongs to in the society.

As already stated, prejudice is usually just an attitude that an individual has towards another member of the society based on their societal standing, while discrimination is a developed form of prejudice since it includes actions (Myers 270). Examples of discrimination are the ones based on sex, race, gender or religion. In this case, sexual discrimination refers to the actions that an individual suffers based on their gender, for example, in the workplace; women are usually discriminated against due to the prejudiced idea that they are weaker than men.

Gender prejudice is also evident when in custodial cases; women are usually favored over men in granting child custody. . elops because of lack of knowledge and ignorance, since many individuals are deceived by the society that some individuals are not as important as they are. An analysis of the theoretical perspectives of prejudice and discrimination reveals that Jane Elliot’s video is based on social learning as a source of prejudice. This social theory tries to explain prejudice by stating that children develop attitudes towards the various groups in society through direct or learnt experiences, usually from the direct environment, their peers, or their elders.

The main factors that play a role in the development of prejudice include parents, peers, the media and friends. For example, the portrayal of minority groups in Jane Elliot’s class led to the development of prejudice, which eventually led to discrimination. The social learning theory can also be developed to include the fact that social categorization can be a source of discrimination. In its barest definition, this means that a society develops the mentality of “us” versus “them”, which means that individuals try to enhance their desirability by associating with social groups (Myers 280).

This means that different social groups develop, which leads to a tendency o compete, and the opposite group is usually discriminated against. This theory can also apply to Jane Elliot’s class video, since the differentiation by eye color effectively created two different social groups in the class. After an analysis of discrimination, it is evident that discrimination can be reduced through four main ways, the first way being an increase in social contact between individuals (Myers 286). The contact hypothesis proposes that increased contact between different individuals will force these individuals to learn the different