Racial, Religious, and Gender Prejudice - Essay Example

? Racial, Religious, and Gender Prejudice May 8, Racial, Religious, and Gender Prejudice Being a Jew in Holocaust times inGermany once resulted to millions of deaths and emotional injuries. In the modern world, however, being a Jew has held negative value for Middle Eastern people who do not agree with the American support provided to Israel. Having Persian blood, nevertheless, may somehow protect some Jews from this kind of prejudice, or maybe not. Furthermore, Judaism, when it intersects with gender, can lead to triple gender, religious, and racial prejudice. Negative stereotypes on Jewish women, for instance, include beliefs that they are materialistic and nosy as mothers or mothers-in-law. This paper is interested in explaining the concept of prejudice from the perspective of a Jewish woman. To be a woman with evident racial and religious characteristics should not be an issue anymore in the present society, but some people’s prejudice results to racial, gender, and religious stereotypes and discrimination that psychologically hurt people. Prejudice is an attitude that provides negative judgment upon certain people. The book defines it as “a preconceived negative judgment of a group and its individual members” (Myers, 2008, p.302). Stereotypes often support prejudice. A stereotype is a “belief about the personal attributes of a group of people” (Myers, 2008, p.302). People use stereotyping to accelerate thought processes in their everyday lives. They attribute a set of characteristics to individuals they do not even know, based on generalizations that have no basis or may only have partial basis. Stereotyping saves time in predicting and understanding the conduct of others, such as their actions and reactions to certain topics and issues. Prejudice can lead to discrimination or behaviors that come from “prejudicial attitudes” (Myers, 2008, p.303). Discrimination is the acting out of prejudice. Discrimination can be overt or subtle, but either way, they result in unfair estimations of people and can impact the latter’s access to social, economic, and political success. As a girl, I have grown in a Jewish community and in a tight Persian family, and so I was largely cushioned from prejudice against my religion and race. The only prejudice I felt was against my gender, which I felt was too much controlled sometimes. I attribute the source to both religion and culture. My family can be quite conservative when it comes to women, although they only do so to protect the institution of marriage for both women and men. They also wanted to avoid their girls from developing liberal sexual values and conduct that are against our religion. Only when I lived in America did I experience different forms of prejudice and discrimination against my race and religion. In 2008, several years already after 9/11, I experienced racial prejudice. I just came from Iran and was walking peacefully along the streets, when I heard someone yelled “Terrorist!” It was already around 9 p.m. and not so many people were around, and I felt somewhat nervous. I looked for the source of the yelling and I realized it came from a bunch of thug-looking male teenagers. I became afraid for my safety and started to run away, while I heard their laughter following me. This experience made me feel uncomfortable as a Persian, and, inevitably, I felt uneasy walking in streets alone for the following months. Fortunately, I soon found friends who would often accompany me in many places and even when I go home, so I have less worries now. As a Jew, I also experienced discrimination from some of my classmates when they applied the so-called Jewish-American Princess stereotype to me and my Jewish friends. This is a degrading term that is based on prejudice about wealthy Jewish families. This prejudice results in the negative stereotype that Jewish women who come from rich families are materialistic and shallow. This time, it was overt prejudice and I did not experience any evident form of discrimination. I was eating my lunch with some Jewish friends, when a group of girls stopped by and looked at our clothing and bags. They whispered to each other and I heard them say: “Gucci. Rich Jewish girls make me sick.” Then they left. That made me and my friends quite angry. They are all intelligent and not shallow. Their parents also gave them their bags. At the same time, we felt embarrassed for our affluence. My friend said: “Sometimes, being rich sucks, not because I do not appreciate its comforts, but because poor people have an excuse to look down on us.” My other friend agrees: “I never brag. I have too much pride to do that. What my parents have, they never stole from anyone. They came here in the U.S. to work hard and to reach for the American Dream. It’s a dream they reached, so what’s the fuss?” We realized that our gender and race made us vulnerable to some prejudiced attacks, but still, we were thankful that none of the discrimination we felt was physical and threatening. I once had to interview a friend who used to have prejudice against Jews and Persians. He changed after knowing Jewish women like me. He said that as a white Italian male, ingroup bias is part of his life, especially since his family was also in business and Jews were often their competitors. He further noted that he never went out of his comfort zone, or he did not interact with people from another race or religion, except with Hispanic Americans and African Americans. He narrated that he grew up with his family believing that Jews are materialistic, including their women. The media also does not help in projecting Jews as materialistic businesspeople. He also admitted having prejudice against Persians because of 9/11 and developing an acute misunderstanding of Islam and people with Arab descent. For this prejudice, he confessed showing hidden discrimination, such as being suspicious when serving people (his family has a restaurant business) who looked Arab. Again, he stressed the role of media in conditioning racial and religious prejudice and discrimination. Nevertheless, he realized that interacting with other people helped remove his prejudice. He understood that prejudice is wrong because stereotypes may be true for some people, but not all, and oftentimes, not true at all. He also agreed with me that discrimination of all forms is immoral. People are individuals and should be respected as individual human beings. The book defines in-group bias as “the tendency to favor one’s group” (Myers, 2008, p.318). This bias drives their “social identity.” Social identity refers to the “we” dimension of self-identity (Myers, 2008, p.317). It is part of the answer to “who am I?” that depends on social memberships (Myers, 2008, p.317). From the case of my friend, it is evident that his prejudice stems from his family upbringing and the media. These social institutions portray Jews and Persians in negative light through negative stereotypes. They are taught that Jews are materialistic and that Persians are Muslims and that Muslims are violent people who cannot be trusted. These stereotypes helped created an ingroup bias for their race and religion. They thought that being white and Christian is superior to others. Their social identity finds conflict with people they consider as “the other.” The more solid their social identity is; the more that children and adolescents are forced to conform to prejudiced images of certain people. My friend stressed that sometimes, he questioned the roots of their prejudice against Jews and Arabs, but his friends, who also disliked these groups, pushed him to conform to prejudiced ideas. Peer pressure can reinforce prejudice and can also influence discriminatory behavior. One time, my friend remembered that his friends trashed a Muslim’s car. He did not participate in it and got “excluded” from the group for some time, because of his non-participation. He said he did not regret his decision then, because it was bad enough that he had racial and religious prejudice, but to act on them would be more immoral. Poor or lack of social interaction with other races and religions stimulates and feeds prejudice. Like what my friend said, they do not interact closely with people who are “different from them,” which makes them vulnerable to the possibility of never realistically checking and changing their prejudice and stereotypes. He realized that if only interracial and interreligious contacts were often encouraged and practiced in his community, these prejudices and discrimination would be removed or lessened. Social institutions can enhance racial discrimination too. When media sensationalizes the news with notions of racial prejudice, it can also lead to the promotion of racial discrimination. The media, which focuses too much on demonizing Arabs or blacks, through using repeated images of these people using bad news, send the inaccurate message that these people’s religion or race are the internal causes of their behaviors. Family, schools, and churches have important roles in teaching tolerance to differences and ensuring that people, especially children and adolescents understand why prejudice and discrimination are wrong. These social institutions should inculcate multicultural attitudes and not prejudice and discrimination. I have experienced prejudice as a woman and because of my race and religion. These prejudices have also been expressed through stereotypes, as well as overt and hidden discrimination. These experiences made me feel vulnerable, anxious, and afraid for some time. However, I opened myself to educating others about my religion and race through befriending other people who are different from me. Through these social interactions, we reproduce and change our social identity and make it more inclusive. We remove ingroup bias and realize that people are different from each other, even when they have the same race, gender, and religion, and that we should tolerate these differences. We become more caring people, all because we interacted with open minds and hearts. Reference Myers, D.G. (2008). Social psychology (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Read More