W.E.B Du Bois
W. E. B. DuBois was the first black person to earn a doctorate at Harvard. He studied race issues, hoping to find a "cure" for prejudice and discrimination. His scientific studies earned him the nickname "The Father of Social Science."
DuBois became an important civil rights activist and co-founded the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
How can we "cure" prejudice?
Before we can think about ways to "cure" prejudice, it is important to understand the differences between prejudice, stereotypes, and your own personal preferences? The best way to understand prejudiced thinking is to understand the concept of categorical thinking.
For example:
1) Read this list of words: awake, dream, snore, bed, eat, slumber, sound, wake, and night.
2) Now, select another word to go with the list
Answer: Sleep
Most students pick sleep because it is highly related to the original list of concepts. The point is, we think in associations and categories. That's why if you get wheeled into an emergency room with a fever, side ache, and nausea doctors suspect Appendicitis.
Categorical thinking is the human cognitive process of storing and retrieving information in sections of our memory that are highly associated with one another.
Categorical thinking saves lives, helps you to pass tests, and keeps students when employed their bosses see them as good employees. It is also is the thinking process which underlies prejudice and stereotypes in our relationships. The key is to control stereotypesStereotypes are broad generalizations about a category of people who are assumed to have positive and negative traits common to every single member of that category. .
First, you have to do some self-analysis and discover where you might have learned your prejudices. Many people are taught prejudice from: family, friends, teachers, religious leaders, television, the internet, and other agents and agencies of socialization. It's feels strange to think that family might teach other family members to be prejudiced, but this may be one of the more common sources.
Socialization of prejudice is learning prejudice from people we look up to (family, relatives, teachers, etc.).
Social structure origin of prejudice occurs when prejudice is built into the group, community, and social institutional components of society.
Social structural prejudice was the case prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Acts when segregation of races was legal in churches, schools, and workplaces. Few questioned it because it appeared to be part of the world-taken-for-granted.
Even though this is no longer the legal situation in the United States, many people still live in neighborhoods with, go to church with, work primarily with and socialize primarily with people of their own race or ethnic group. They have little personal exposure to people of other groups, which can lead to prejudices.
Competition origin of prejudice occurs when members of one group feel threatened and or deprived by members of another group for limited resources.
Competition origin of prejudice ties in well with the concept of relative deprivation. When groups of people feel that they are losing at the expense of other groups' gains, it breeds and fuels competitive hostility at numerous levels. This is an especially common form of prejudice in the job market. When a person make a comment like, "I would have a job if [insert group here] didn’t take all the jobs," that person is expressing the competition level of prejudice. Another term for this is scapegoating.
Relative deprivation is the perception of not being the rightful beneficiary of something a person feels entitled to receive.
Scapegoating is placing the blame for one's troubles on an innocent individual or group.
Once you get an idea of where your own prejudices come from you can employ proven strategies for managing them. First and foremost, understand that you are the only one who can manage your personal prejudices. Second, interact with others on the personal, not the categorical level.
Third, find the common ground shared between you and others; ask questions, share information and look for experiences, exact or similar, that connect you both on common shared backgrounds. Fourth, if you say or do something offensive to another, talk about it and apologize; learn from your mistakes. One prejudiced thought or feeling does make a bigot! Fifth, find someone you can relate to who has managed their prejudices successfully, and let them be a role model.
Bigotry is the intolerance for the beliefs of others, particularly those of minority groups.
