Discrimination in Everyday Life - Intro to Social Justice

discrimination

A behavior, action or practice resulting in the unequal treatment of people based on some social characteristic such as race, gender, disability, etc.; The unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people; avoidance, suspicion of wrongdoing, denial of privileges, or hate inspired violence.

individual/interpersonal discrimination

Expression of attitudes or behaviors by individual people; consists of overt and covert acts by individuals that harm other individuals or their property; intentional and unintentional; Influenced by stereotypes and prejudice

stereotypes 

the overgeneralized belief that a certain trait, behavior, or attitude characterizes all members of some identifiable group.

prejudice

a negative or positive evaluation or feeling toward an individual based solely on their membership in a particular group.

the most common understanding of discrimination

individual/interpersonal discrimination, can be conscious or unconscious, involves implicit bias

implicit/unconscious bias 

A form of bias that occurs automatically and unintentionally, that nevertheless affects judgments, decisions, and behaviors; when we have attitudes towards people or associate stereotypes with them without our conscious knowledge; can cause individuals to unknowingly act in discriminatory ways.

organizational/institutional discrimination

takes place in employment, housing, and the government through “well-established rules, policies, and practices of organizations.”; does not reside in any one person (goes beyond the individual!) but is in the fabric and patterned interactions of an institution; embedded in institutions (policies, practices, norms)

example of organizational/institutional discrimination

organizations that present themselves as gender neutral or color blind favor cis white men by protecting and promoting the status quo; emphasis on covert, not overt practices

voter ID laws

example of organizational discrimination by local governments; In the early United States, voting rights were severely restricted to a small portion of the population, specifically white, property-owning men; currently part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights; reduce voter turnout by disenfranchising most marginalized groups

structural/systemic discrimination

Focus on the ways in which multiple institutions INTERACT WITH ONE ANOTHER to produce barriers to opportunities; macro level conditions that reproduce itself 

redlining

an example of structural/systemic discrimination; Once used by banks and the real estate industry, Banks were less likely to give loans or invest in areas inside the redline (viewed as too risky), Homes in the red line areas worth less than in white neighborhoods; businesses less likely to move there; led to large systemic inequalities

why look beyond individual/interpersonal discrimination

Helps us understand and explain the persistent national patterns inequality and underrepresentation.; Built into our society and can be self perpetuating!

historical racist medical assumptions

Black people were inherently different (physiologically) from and inferior to whites; Two main fallacies: that black people were impervious to pain and had weak lungs (that could be strengthened with hard labor); Used to justify racial stratification, treated as objective fact

racism in medical profession today

fallacies supported racist ideologies and discriminatory public policies; They became institutionalized (embedded into the practices and policies of the medical field)!; continues to assume black people have high pain threshold

bullying

is a form of social control, surveillance, policing and punishment of those who do not conform to social norms; is about power—the power to control others; an example of individual/interpersonal discrimination.

social control

An attempt to force them to conform

example of social control

University of Montana when their church group began praying away “the spirit of homosexuality.”; is an example of organizational/institutional discrimination

two spirit

refers to a person who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit; may encompass same-sex attraction, gender fluidity, intersex; does not fit essentialist, heteronormative or cisnormative standards

western gaze

Essentialist conception of sex, gender, and sexuality; ethnocentric