thesis in discrimination

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
Communication and Culture
Communication and Social Change
Communication and Technology
Communication Theory
Critical/Cultural Studies
Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies)
Health and Risk Communication
Intergroup Communication
International/Global Communication
Interpersonal Communication
Journalism Studies
Language and Social Interaction
Mass Communication
Media and Communication Policy
Organizational Communication
Political Communication
Rhetorical Theory
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Culture, prejudice, racism, and discrimination.

John Baldwin John Baldwin School of Communication, Illinois State University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.164
Published online: 25 January 2017

Prejudice is a broad social phenomenon and area of research, complicated by the fact that intolerance exists in internal cognitions but is manifest in symbol usage (verbal, nonverbal, mediated), law and policy, and social and organizational practice. It is based on group identification (i.e., perceiving and treating a person or people in terms of outgroup membership); but that outgroup can range from the more commonly known outgroups based on race, sex/gender, nationality, or sexual orientation to more specific intolerances of others based on political party, fan status, or membership in some perceived group such as “blonde” or “athlete.” This article begins with the link of culture to prejudice, noting specific culture-based prejudices of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. It then explores the levels at which prejudice might be manifest, finally arriving at a specific focus of prejudice—racism; however, what applies to racism may also apply to other intolerances such as sexism, heterosexism, classism, or ageism.

The discussion and analysis of prejudice becomes complicated when we approach a specific topic like racism, though the tensions surrounding this phenomenon extend to other intolerances such as sexism or heterosexism. Complications include determining the influences that might lead to individual racism or an atmosphere of racism, but also include the very definition of what racism is: Is it an individual phenomenon, or does it refer to an intolerance that is supported by a dominant social structure? Because overt intolerance has become unpopular in many societies, researchers have explored how racism and sexism might be expressed in subtle terms; others investigate how racism intersects with other forms of oppression, including those based on sex/gender, sexual orientation, or colonialism; and still others consider how one might express intolerance “benevolently,” with good intentions though still based on problematic racist or sexist ideologies.

discrimination
intolerance
heterosexism
stereotypes
ethnocentrism

Introduction

One of the causes that gave rise to the postmodern revolution in France in 1968 was the failure of modern science and philosophy—liberalism, social science, reason, and so on—to remedy problems of war, poverty, and intolerance (Rosenau, 1992 ). As we look around today at the world in general, or even within specific nations, we continue to see a wide range of prejudice, from the 1994 genocide of Tutsis (and many Hutus) by Hutus in Rwanda to the mass killing of 70 people, mostly youths, at a Utøyan youth camp in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik. At this writing, a major refugee problem exists from people fleeing Middle Eastern countries where a strong ISIS influence is leading to the killing of gays, Christians, and Muslims from rival belief systems. In many European countries, hate groups and right-wing politicians are gaining ground. The Southern Poverty Law center tracks 1,600 hate groups within the United States (“Hate and Extremism,” n.d. ), classifying 784 that were active in 2014 (“Hate Map,” n.d. ), and the FBI reports nearly 6,000 hate crimes in the United States, with the greatest numbers due to race (48.5%), religion (17.4%), and sexual orientation (20.8%; FBI, 2014 ). These statistics reveal some interesting things about intolerance. For example, the “race”-based hate crimes include crimes based on anti-white sentiment as well as against people of color; and about 61% of hate crimes based on sexual orientation target gay males.

Both the international events and the statistics relevant to any specific nation prompt difficult questions about intolerance. In a white-dominant society, can or should we call anti-white crimes by people of color “racist”? If someone commits a hate crime based on sexual orientation, why are gay men more often the target than lesbians? Would hate crimes in other countries reflect the same axes of difference, or might hate crimes be based differently? German hate crimes might be based more on ethnicity (e.g., against Turkish immigrants, who by most racial classifications would be Caucasian). Why do people commit such acts at all?

One mistake we often make is thinking of prejudice and discrimination only in extreme terms such as genocide and hate crimes. In many countries and cultures, where overt expression of racism (and other intolerances) has become socially unacceptable, intolerances have gone “underground,” hidden in subtle forms. Further, intolerance can rely upon a wide variety of identity groups, including some that are (supposedly) biologically based, like racism, or based on other aspects, such as political party, fan status, or membership in some perceived group such as “blonde” or “athlete.” In sum, we must consider the relationship between different forms of intolerance, including but not limited to prejudice, racism, and discrimination; but these must always be understood within specific cultural contexts.

Culture and Intolerance

(re)defining culture.

As we look to the cultural influence on intolerance, we must first consider the definition of culture. The study of culture has deep roots in anthropological and linguistic research, especially as seen in the work of Franz Boaz and his students Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Edward Sapir, as well as in the early work of Edward Tyler, itself based on earlier traditions of ethology (Darwin) and social evolution (Marx). This work influenced the work of anthropologist E. T. Hall (Rogers & Hart, 2002 ) and others who laid the groundwork for the study of intercultural communication (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990 ). Scholars have debated whether culture is a shared mental framework of beliefs, norms for behavior (i.e., the expectations for behavior rather than the behaviors themselves), values, and worldview, or whether culture should also include actual behaviors, texts, and artifacts of a group. In 1952 , A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn synthesized over 150 definitions of culture into a single definition that focuses on “patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior,” along with “ideas and especially their attached values” (p. 181). These are influenced and created through symbolic behavior, action, and other aspects of the environment (history, geography). The definitional dimensions of culture described by Kroeber and Kluckhohn explained well many of the definitions of culture up until the 1980s. After that time, some scholars (especially in communication) began to treat culture more as a set of symbols and meanings. Others framed culture as a process of constructing social meanings and systems through communication. As people sing, speak, play, tell jokes, and conduct business, they are constantly (re)creating their culture—both relying upon it and changing it.

More pertinent to the study of intolerance is a new approach to culture that sees culture neither as “suitcase” of things (be those beliefs and values or texts and artifacts) passed down from one generation to the next nor as a neutral process of mutual symbolic creation through time, but as having vested power interests that seek to influence what is seen as accepted or normal within a culture. For example, Moon ( 2002 ) defines culture as a “contested zone”:

Thinking about culture as a contested zone helps us understand the struggles of cultural groups and the complexities of cultural life … If we define culture as a contested zone in which different groups struggle to define issues in their own interests, we must also recognize that not all groups have equal access to public forums to voice their concerns, perspectives, and the everyday realities of their lives” (pp. 15–16).

That is, every cultural manifestation, such as the framing of Australian culture as “individualistic” or saying that “Australian men have such-and-such characteristics,” highlights what one should not be within that culture and establishes bounds for group-based intolerance.

With this diversity of definitions in mind, one is not sure what to think culture is or should be. Baldwin, Faulkner, Hecht, and Lindsley ( 2006 ) present a series of essays on the definition of culture by authors from six different disciplines (e.g., multicultural education, anthropology, political science), as well as 313 definitions of culture from an even greater number of disciplines, which they analyze. While they are reluctant to settle on a single definition of culture, this definition embraces most trends:

The way of life of a group of people, including symbols, values, behaviors, artifacts, and other shared aspects, that continually evolves as people share messages and is often the result of a struggle between groups who share different perspectives, interests, and power relationships (Baldwin, Coleman, González, & Shenoy-Packer, 2014 , p. 55).

This definition of culture, like most definitions that take a symbolic, process, or critical approach, does not treat cultures as “nations,” but as people groups who share symbolic or speech codes, with multiple cultural groups—defined not by demographic constitutions such as race, sex, or age, but by shared communicative realities—sharing single geographic areas. It is in the creation and defending of cultures—from countries to local and virtual communities—that intolerance often becomes apparent.

The Role of Culture in Prejudice

Of various schools of thought about the nature and origins of intolerance, only one approach suggests that intolerance is biological or in some way inherited, and that is sociobiology, or evolutionary theory. This approach suggests that intolerance is based on such things as preservation of the purity of the gene pool of one’s group, an inherent fear of strangers, or an inherited need for group identity. But even evolutionary theorists cannot explain all intolerance based on a theory of inherited impulse. Meyer ( 1987 ) argues:

Xenophobia and ethnocentrism as extreme forms of this search for identity cannot be attributed to [human] biology … Their very existence is a result of [human’s] attempts towards understanding the world, and [their] strong affective need to delimit a cosmos of conspecifics with whom [they] can share interpretations of [their] socially construed world (p. 93).

Research on intolerance in 90 preindustrial societies suggests that, when there are clearly psychological causes for intergroup conflict, groups ultimately use communication to create who the enemy is and how one should demonstrate or show intolerance (Ross, 1991 ). In sum, there is a strong cultural component determining which intolerances are felt or expressed in a given place or time.

Culture, however one defines it, can affect tolerance. Culture might be a set of values and beliefs, such as the value of loyalty to one’s group, combined with a belief that people who belong to a particular group have particular characteristics, are unlikeable for some reason, or merit mistreatment and the application of a different set of standards than we apply to ourselves (Opotow, 1990 ). If culture is a process, then we might look at how a culture creates both identity and intolerance through the ongoing structures of language, including word choices (“babe,” “hunk,” “faggot”), conversational structure (interruptions, etc.), joke- and storytelling, and so on. For example, West and Zimmerman’s ( 1987 ) notion of “doing gender” (i.e., gender as an everyday accomplishment of language) has led to countless studies of gender construction in several nations, as well as a focus by others on how we also “do race” and other identities. The way that we construct our identities through communication is inherently linked to how we construct the identities of those in outgroups, as we shall see; but they are also linked to behavior within our group. Social constructionist approaches to culture thus often become critical in their focus on power relations. Critical approaches look at how cultures, through communication, architecture, law, literature, education, and so on create a sense of the “other”—and of the self—that constrains us and pits us against one another in group conflict.

“Culture”-Based Prejudices: Ethnocentrism, Xenophobia

The purpose of this article is primarily to look at racism and discrimination as forms of prejudice; however, these cannot be understood without a larger understanding of prejudice in general and other forms or types of prejudice. Allport ( 1979 ) defines prejudice as an antipathy one has or a tendency to avoid the other, based on the other person’s group. For Allport, prejudice is a cognitive or psychological phenomenon:

Prejudice is ultimately a problem of personality formation and development; no two cases of prejudice are precisely the same. No individual would mirror his [or her] group’s attitude unless he [or she] had a personal need, or personal habit, that leads him [or her] to do so (p. 41).

Based on the Greek word that means “fear of strangers,” xenophobia refers to “the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 235). The idea is frequently applied to a mistrust or dislike (rather than merely fear) of outgroups or those perceived to be different, especially in national terms. While the Greek translation suggests the psychological component of fear, recent researchers have treated the concept in behavioral or message terms. Historical research on xenophobia links it to anti-Semitism and, more recently, to Islamophobia, though it does not have as clear a historical trajectory as ethnocentrism; many more recent studies look at South Africa as a model nation in attempting to strategically reduce xenophobia. Researchers use a variety of methods to look at xenophobia, depending on their research assumptions and background disciplines. Rhetorical media research, for example, analyzes how Czech newspapers code anti-Roma sentiment through subtle terms such as “inadaptable citizens” ( nepřízpůsobivý občan , Slavíčková & Zvagulis, 2014 , p. 159); and psychological survey research investigates how, among Southern California students, ethnocentrism is positively associated with both language prejudice and feelings of being threatened by immigrants (Ura, Preston, & Mearns, 2015 ).

Van Dijk ( 1993 ) notes how groups can use language such as hyperbole of differences to marginalize immigrants, often through appeals to so-called democratic values. He notes that in some countries, such as in Central Europe, where claims of racism are often forcefully resisted due to conceptual ties of the term to Hitler’s Holocaust, Ausländerfeindlicheit (fear of foreigners) takes its place, though this fear of foreigners is frequently aimed at Turks and other (often darker-skinned and religiously different) people who resist adoption of traditional Germanic culture.

Ethnocentrism

Some types of prejudice relate specifically to the larger and more traditional notion of culture (i.e., cultures as nations). Ethnocentrism gained prominence as an area of research following sociologist Robert Sumner’s 1906 definition of the term as gauging others in reference to one’s own culture ( 1975 ), though other sociologists soon began to distinguish between this notion of “centrality” and the idea of “superiority”—that one’s culture or group is superior to those of others. If one sees ethnocentrism strictly as a feeling of superiority, nationalism (or school spirit, or religious loyalty, etc.) might not in and of itself be ethnocentric if it focuses only on being loyal to or highlighting the benefits of one’s own group, without denigrating others, though some might argue that it is impossible to feel pride in one’s own group without, at some level, disdaining or thinking less of other groups. The possibility of an ethnocentric bias in research led many early anthropologists to suggest ethnography—spending extended time within a culture to see things from cultural members’ point of view—as a way to reduce ethnocentrism in research.

A consideration of ethnocentrism has implications for other forms of bias as well, as the factors that predict national cultural ethnocentrism—and solutions that address it—could apply equally to one’s perception of life within one’s own community. The Hmong-descended people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States will likely feel that their ways are superior to those of Moroccan- or Guatemalan-descended peoples, as well as to those of the dominant culture. Auestad ( 2013 ) presented a series of essays on the rise of political discourses across the world that highlighted elements of national security and identity (tradition), as well as the building of cultures of fear by focusing on the negative aspects of foreigners or those of different religious groups within single countries. Some elements of the U.S. presidential race rhetoric of 2015–2016 exemplified this xenophobic and ethnocentric trend.

Within the field of intercultural communication, at least two lines of research have focused on ethnocentrism. The first is by Jim Neuliep, who, with colleagues, has revisited the measurement of ethnocentrism in the classic 1950 work by the Frankfurt School, The Authoritarian Personality , with a new measure of ethnocentrism. After applying the measure to white Americans, Neuliep ( 2012 ) continues to test the relationship of ethnocentrism to other important intercultural variables, such as intercultural anxiety and communication satisfaction. The second is Milton Bennett’s ( 1993 ) consideration of ethnorelativism. In this approach, a range of attitudes reflects either ethnocentrism or ethnorelativism. Ethnocentric stances include denial (e.g., indifference toward or ignorance of any difference at all), defense (traditional ethnocentrism of denigrating the culture of the other or feeling one’s own culture is superior, but also in “going native”), and minimization (focusing on similarities and ignoring differences, by claiming “color blindness,” or focusing on how we are all the same, be that as “God’s children” or in the Marxist struggle against oppression; 43). As one grows more “ethnorelative,” or accepting of difference, one exhibits one of three stages: acceptance (being respectful of and even appreciating the value and behavioral differences of others), adaptation (actually adopting behaviors or views of other groups), or integration (adopting a worldview that transcends any single culture). This approach has gained ground around the world and in different disciplines, from Finland to Iran, with applications from cultural sensitivity to interreligious tensions.

One of the difficulties of discussing prejudice is the conceptual overlap between terms (e.g., xenophobia conflates with racial or ethnic prejudice; ethnocentrism might refer to any people group, such as ethnic groups, and not just nations). At the root of our understanding of prejudice is the very goal of “tolerance.” In fact, the notion of tolerance for diversity may be limited: It is often treated merely as “the application of the same moral principles and rules, caring and empathy, and feelings of connections to human beings of other perceived groups” (Baldwin & Hecht, 1995 , p. 65). That is, it is similar to Bennett’s ( 1993 ) notion of acceptance, of respect for difference, though that respect sometimes (a) occurs at a difference and (b) sometimes exists in behavioral form only, but is not internalized. Communication of tolerance is a worthwhile pursuit in our behavior and research; however, we argue that we can go beyond tolerance to appreciation—even to the behavioral and attitudinal integration of elements of the other culture (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). There is a danger of such appreciation, as borrowing (e.g., “cultural hybridity”) occurs within power relations. We are not talking about a dominant group borrowing from subordinate or subaltern groups in a colonizing or folklorizing way, but about cultural learning and dialogue.

Limited Perspectives of Prejudice

That consideration of tolerance/prejudice should be treated as a dichotomy or a range is only one of the difficulties that has haunted the study and conceptualization of prejudice. Debates have swirled around the nature of prejudice, the causes of prejudice, and the “locus” of certain prejudices (such as racism or sexism), among other things. Allport ( 1979 ) suggests that prejudice is a “generalized” attitude—that if one is prejudiced, say, toward Jewish people, she or he will also be prejudiced toward communists, people of color, and so on. It is possible, however, that one might be prejudiced toward some groups, even in some contexts, but not toward other groups (Baldwin & Hecht, 1995 ).

The nature of prejudice

Allport ( 1979 ) defines prejudice as “an avertive [i.e., avoiding] or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he [or she] belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group” (p. 7). By this definition, prejudice is an aspect of affect , or feeling toward a group, though it is closely related to cognitions , or thoughts about the group, referring to stereotypes. Also, prejudice is inherently negative, following the primary definition common in modern dictionaries, though a secondary definition includes any sort of prejudgment based on group belonging, such as prejudice toward one’s own group. Most dictionary definitions follow the attitudinal approach, though in common usage, people often use the term to refer to things like racism, which carry behavioral and even policy implications that are not strictly attitudes. By strictest definition, prejudice is an attitude that favors one group over another, based on or related to cognitions, and both leading to and influenced by behaviors (including communication), texts (e.g., media, rhetoric), and policies (following the notion of structuration, in which social structures guide social behavior, but social behavior in turn creates and changes social structures).

Causes of prejudice

Allport ( 1979 ) recognized a series of influences that impact a particular incident of prejudice, such as police brutality based on racial group/social class divisions or anti-Islamic bullying in secondary schools around the Western world. These include historical, sociological, situational, psychodynamic, and phenomenological (i.e., perceptual) influences. But ultimately, for Allport, a social psychologist, prejudice is “a problem of personality formation and development” (p. 41). For Althusser ( 1971 ), a Marxist philosopher, prejudice would likely, in the last instance, be an issue of economic and social class considerations. Ultimately, a cross-disciplinary perspective is more useful for understanding a complex phenomenon like prejudice (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). A broader consideration should consider multiple causes (Baldwin, 1998 ), including evolutionary causes, psychological causes (both psychodynamic and perceptual), sociological causes, and rhetorical causes. Communication and behavior become central in each of these causes, highlighting the need for a communicative understanding of prejudice.

Evolutionary causes, often referred to under the rubric of sociobiology, focus on the way in which prejudice might be an inherited trait, possibly even genetic (see, e.g., essays in Reynolds, Falger, & Vine, 1987 ). This approach includes the idea that groups seek to preserve themselves (e.g., by preservation of a supposedly pure gene pool or because of fear of the stranger), the ethnocentrism already noted. Behaviors that exclude have a sense of “naturalness” in that they help a group to survive, and such exclusion of strangers may help to preserve a group’s existence. Some scholars have criticized this approach as a rationale for conservative politics that create a notion of “us” and “them” as natural and that exclude the other, often in racial or religious terms, in order to preserve the way of life of a dominant group within a culture or nation.

Psychological explanations of prejudice fall into at least two major divisions. The first, psychodynamic, suggests that prejudice serves as a mechanism for individuals to meet psychological needs. Thus researchers have long linked it to things such as ambivalence toward parents, rigid personality structure, and a need for authority (Allport, 1979 ; Adorno et al., 1950 ). We see this indirectly through Kenneth Burke’s ( 1967 ) approach to rhetoric in his analysis of Hitler’s campaign against Jewish people as a means to divert negative emotions related to economic and political difficulties from the mainstream German people to Jews, and in Edward Said’s ( 2003 ) Orientalism , which notes how Medieval Europe cast negative images of lust and vice on Middle Easterners that the Europeans did not see in themselves.

A second aspect of the psychological approach concerns perception or cognition. This contains a range of possible influences on prejudice, including such things as selective attention, perception, and recall of the negative behavior of outgroup members, or the notion of attributional biases that impact how we give meanings to the behavior of those of our ingroup and those of outgroups. At the center of many of these explanations is the notion of categorization of people (i.e., dividing them into cognitive groups such as ingroups and outgroups). Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986 ) suggests that we cannot think of ourselves apart from the groups to which we belong; we engage in intergroup comparison as a means to make us feel better about our group; and, if our group does not compare well to a group we admire or must rely on in some way—often the dominant group—we engage in strategies to reclaim a sense of pride for our group or distance ourselves from it.

Categorization, in social identity theory, is not a form of prejudice—it is simply the mental placing of people (or things, actions, characteristics, etc.) into mental boxes. However, those boxes are closely related to the stereotypes that cling to groups. Stereotypes are overgeneralizations we make about groups that we apply to individuals in those groups (Herbst, 1997 ). Although these stereotypes provide a mental shortcut for processing information about others, they interfere with our encoding, storage, and recall of information about members of our own group and other groups (Stephan, 1985 ). Countless studies of stereotypes suggest that stereotypes, like ethnocentrism, can serve positive ingroup functions, that they sometimes have at least some basis in an actual behavior or custom (a “kernel of truth”), and that we stereotype both our own group and other groups. Devine (e.g., Devine & Sharp, 2009 ) has found that even people who report lower prejudice, if mentally occupied, still rely on stereotypes, suggesting that everyone is aware of societal stereotypes toward certain groups (e.g., the elderly, athletes, the deaf). It is likely that if we are on auto-pilot or in a state of mindlessness, we will resort to stereotypes. But individuating people (i.e., taking them out of the group we perceive them to be in and treating them as individuals; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2003 ) may require deliberate cognitive effort.

Group-based, or sociological, approaches, like psychological approaches, are varied. These include Marxist approaches, which are themselves varied in form (see various essays in Rex & Mason, 1986 ). Some hold tightly to a “vulgar” vision of Marxism, framing intolerance like racism as a creation of the elite to divide the working classes and distract them from revolution through “false consciousness.” Few Marxists take such a severe approach, choosing to see looser relations between capital and the construction of intolerance, but in the “last instance,” seeing intolerance as linked to social class and economic systems. “Capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchal social systems are frequently identified as producing inherent race and gender inequalities which, in various ways, serve the needs of the systems they perpetuate” (Knowles & Mercer, 1992 , p. 110). Weberian approaches see a wider variety of classes than workers and elite, with prejudice linked not just to labor forces but to the struggle over goods, services, and prestige (Gerth & Mills, 1946 ). Other group-based factors also impact prejudice, such as perceived group competition for jobs and resources in times of economic upheaval (e.g., the 1970s oil crisis in the United States), known as realistic group conflict (Bobo, 1983 ); immigration reasons (refugees versus those seeking economic opportunity, patterns of settlement; Omi & Winant, 1986 ); and historically developed class statuses between groups that link immigrants or members of a minority group to a certain class (Wilson, 1978 ), such as the Gastarbeiter (guest-worker) Turks in Germany or the Algerian-descended French.

In a classic “chicken-egg” argument about which came first, it is fruitless to debate whether psychology leads to sociological causes or vice versa, and, in turn, whether these lead to the communicative expression of intolerance, or whether it is the communicative construction of group identities and intolerance that creates the attitudes (Ruscher, 2001 ). It is more likely that mental structures and communicative practices co-create each other, through forms we shall examine in more detail. One possible metaphor for understanding these influences, the impact of historical situations (such as the longstanding antipathy between Turkish and Greek Cypriots, Broome, 2005 ), and specific incidents (such as the attack on the World Trade Towers in New York City in 2001 ), is as layers building upon one other, or even as a hologram, in which we can imperfectly see some semblance of a complex prejudice through a single image—an experimental study on racial perceptions and media use, an analysis of an anti-Irish speech or a pro-nationalist song, or interviews with women who are victims of catcalling (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). But, as a complete hologram provides the most faithful image, the most complete view of an intolerance will come through multiple views (e.g., disciplines), using multiple methods.

Racism: A Case Study in Prejudice

Racism as a specific type of prejudice is one of the most hotly discussed and debated sites of intolerance in contemporary times in the United States and beyond. Even countries that once imagined themselves as “racial democracies” in which racially different people lived side by side (like Brazil) are now admitting the harsh reality of entrenched and historic racism. Even though many there argue that class, not race, is the primary social distinction, as racism has become officially illegal, forms of overt racism, from social media to abuse and killing of unarmed blacks by police continue to receive recent focus in U.S. news.

Racism is a form of intolerance that is based on the supposedly biological distinction of race, but many authors today argue that race is a social construct, sometimes defined differently from country to country and even over time within a single country. Different authors have outlined the history of the notion of race in the English language, noting that at different times, it has referred to an ancestral clan (the race of Abraham), to supposed biological differences, and, more recently, to culture (Banton, 1987 ; Omi & Winant, 1986 ). Those who see a biological component cannot agree on how many races there are and, historically, politics and rhetoric have done as much to construct who belongs in a particular race as biology (e.g., in the early U.S., the Irish were considered “colored”). In the United States, race was based on racist assumptions, on one having even a small degree of colored blood in one’s ancestral lineage; in other cultures, race is based strictly on physiological features, regardless of lineage. Ethnicity , in contrast, is related more to the cultural origins of one’s background or ancestry, sometimes linked to a specific time and place. To emphasize its social constructedness, many authors bracket “race” with quotation marks.

Who Can Be Racist? The Locus of Racism (and Other Intolerances)

Can minority members be “racist”.

Beyond the nature of race itself, researchers and educators debate the very nature of racism. Some contend that racism is an intolerance based on the construction of race that is perpetrated and held by the support of the dominant system. For example, Malott and Schaefle ( 2015 ) define racism as “a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group (whites in the United States) exercise power or privilege over those in nondominant groups” (p. 361). According to this argument, only whites can be racist in a white-dominated system (whether that dominance is by numbers or in political and social power). Others contend that racism is any system of beliefs—“held consciously or otherwise”—that treats members of a group that is different on supposedly biological grounds as “biologically different than one’s own” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 193). By this definition, anyone who sees another race group as inferior would be racist.

The locus of racism: Individual or structural?

This distinction in racism also applies to definitions of sexism or to the delineation between homophobia as a personal dislike or fear of LGBT individuals and heterosexism as a social structure that reinforces prejudice against them (Nakayama, 1998 ). The debate is similar to the definitional debate of prejudice in general—is it something that is strictly an individual trait, or is it something that is socially built into the structures of society—the laws, the media, the educational system, the church, and so on? Associated with this question is the nature of what racism is: The “individual-level” definition treats racism as a system of beliefs (i.e., a psychological construct), and the other treats it as a system of oppression that goes beyond individual psyche and personality to consider racism embedded within social structures. The question of where we see racism (and other intolerances) is vitally important. Those who see racism and other intolerances as primarily individual-level (stereotypes, personal dislikes, etc.) tend to address intolerance through training and educational programs in organizations and schools; those who see it as systemic believe that such approaches ignore larger issues of policy, law, segregation, discrimination, and media/rhetoric that produce and reproduce racist beliefs or create an environment that makes them grow. We see this tension, for example, in Rattansi’s ( 1992 ) discussion of the debate between multicultural education—an educational solution to tolerance focused on educating about differences—and antiracism, which addresses political and social structures that propagate and support racism.

Racism: Defined by intent or result?

A related definitional distinction regarding racism concerns whether an intent of harm or exclusion is necessary to define thoughts or actions as racist. Miles ( 1989 ) criticizes earlier notions of racism, largely in that they re-inscribe the notion of race as if it were a concrete reality rather than a social construction. He weaves together a new approach to racism that begins with discourses that serve to exclude the “other” (based on supposed biological differences); for Miles, “the concept of racism should refer to the function, rather than the content of the discourses” (p. 49), allowing racism to include things that may not sound racist but still seek to exclude the other. Miles differentiates racism from racialization , the categorization of people based on supposed biological differences. He argues against the use of racism and disagrees with a stance that would have only whites being racist, such that “all ‘white’ people are universally and inevitably sick with racism” (p. 53), as this concept may ignore the specifics of racism in particular countries, cultures, or circumstances; however, he notes the need to consider institutional racism—racism built into organizational, legal, and social structures—that does favor whites in many countries. By this, one could speak of racism as something any person could hold or express, but institutional racism would be reserved for a group that has power in a particular context. Finally, he bases racism not on the intent of an action, but on the result. He argues that racism is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices” (pp. 77–78), such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions. Goldberg ( 1993 ) argues that we should allow racism to include either intent or result.

Including resulting exclusionary practice in our definition of racism has implications for redressing or addressing racism. First, it suggests a limitation in addressing overt racist thoughts and stereotypes only through education, as policies, laws, and social structures foster an environment for the presence of such thoughts and their communication. Miles ( 1989 ) advocates that “strategies for eliminating racism should concentrate less on trying exclusively to persuade those who articulate racism that they are ‘wrong’ and more on changing those particular economic and political relations” (p. 82). A second implication is that, even as we seek to address racism through everyday interactions and social media, because racism is such a charged topic, we will advance our cause little by calling an action, a joke, or a Facebook or Twitter posting “racist.” The poster, holding a more traditional view of racism as intentionally harmful in some way, will deny racist intent, and a charge of racism will move the discussion into the original communicator’s attempts to avoid the charge of racism (or sexism, etc.), rather than addressing the specific policy, image, or statement. Instead, we might discuss and demonstrate through evidence the way that the policy or image excludes others based on race. Without invoking the “r-word,” we may have a better chance at engaging in dialogues about policies, laws, and communicative behaviors that exclude others.

Intersectionalities of Racism

As we have begun to notice, one thing that complicates the concept of racism is its overlap with other terms, such as prejudice (with racism being a subset of prejudice). So, although xenophobia and ethnocentrism are distinct and separate from racism, the “other” within these concepts is often articulated or perceived in terms of race. A focus on racism and antiracism, unfortunately, often excludes other bases of intolerance that may be even more prominent within a given area, such as religious intolerance, sexism, or heterosexism. At the same time, it is useful to see how racism intersects with and sometimes leads to other intolerances, all of which have received much thought in recent years.

In some cases, feminists and antiracists have been at odds, proponents of each claiming that their sphere of oppression is the one that merits the most attention. Feminism is defined as “the belief that men and women are equal and should have equal respect and opportunities in all spheres of life—personal, social, work, and public” (Wood, 2008 , p. 324). Feminist communication research seeks to make the voices of women heard, to highlight their experiences within the social construction of gender, and “their experiences of oppression and of coping with and resisting that oppression” (Foss & Foss, 1994 , p. 39). Recent feminists consider how patriarchy, or male power or hegemony over the realities and voices of women, is not something maintained only by men nor is it deliberate. Rather, it is held in place by systems often beyond the awareness of men and women, and consented to and participated in by women themselves (Zompetti, 2012 ). Each of these ideas could also apply to racism, revealing a similarity between sexism and racism. But racism and sexism are also joined in the experiences of women of color, whose specific life situations are not fully addressed by either antiracist efforts or feminism. Collins ( 1990 ), for example, argues that African American women in the United States live in a site of triple oppression—by race, sex, and class, with these oppressions articulated by both the dominant white community and within the black community.

Queer theory

Queer theory seeks to challenge the way in which society passes on heterosexuality as the norm. Warner ( 1991 ) sees oppression of gays and lesbians in every aspect of society and in “a wide range of institutions and ideology” (p. 5). But even more so, he feels that the academy’s silence regarding oppression of sexual identity participates in that oppression. Chávez ( 2013 ) supports this claim, noting that at the writing of her article, no major journal in the National Communication Association had devoted a full issue to queer studies. Again, recent scholars have been looking at the intersection of race and sexual orientation (Yep, 2013 ), such as the representations and experiences of older gay male adults, Latina lesbians, and transgender blacks.

Whiteness studies

Based on the early writings of Richard Dyer ( 1997 ) and Ruth Frankenberg ( 1993 ), researchers have highlighted the notion of whiteness —a hidden system of ideology and social structure that maintains whites in a position of advantage—but one that is often invisible to, and yet defended by, whites (Wander, Nakayama, & Martin, 1999 ). Whiteness studies call attention to areas of white privilege. “By exposing the ‘invisibility’ of whiteness, the study of whiteness helps us understand the way that white domination continues” (p. 22). A current search for “whiteness” in a communication library search engine reveals over 800 articles on the topic. Many of these are media studies on how whiteness is promoted and/or challenged in a wide variety of texts, including South Park , the Rush Hour movies, The Hunger Games , and Glee . But whiteness is also analyzed in areas of education, everyday language, and health and organizational communication, as well as in many different countries.

Orientalism/postcolonialism

whiteness studies owe part of their heritage to postcolonialism, which has its own roots in the conceptualization of Orientalism by Edward Said ( 2003 ). Said analyzes European art and literature to reveal the construction of the Arab or Middle Easterner as “other.” He notes how the Western ideology of the East (referring to the Middle East) folklorizes and sexualizes Middle Easterners, treating them as backward, in a way that justifies European colonization and paternalism. Thousands of books now deal in some way with Orientalism, and Said’s notion of the “other” has become a stock theme in how we consider the racial other. For example, though not framed explicitly in Orientalism, James Baldwin’s famous 1955 essay “Stranger in the Village” talks about the rage of the black man as he confronts white America and the naiveté of whites—a naiveté that they work hard to preserve (thus relating Baldwin’s ideas to whiteness). When whites arrive in Africa, blacks are astonished:

The white man takes the astonishment as tribute, for he arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of my existence … The rage of the disesteemed is personally fruitless, but it is also absolutely inevitable: the rage, so generally discounted, so little understood even among the people whose daily bread it is, is one of the things that makes history.

Postcolonialism, building upon Orientalism, considers all locations where one nation or people group has colonized another group, considering the cultural, political, and social ramifications of that colonization and seeking to remedy social ills that it has brought about. Shome and Hegde ( 2002 ) call the approach “interventionist and highly political” (p. 250). Postcolonialism notes how much of the world is forced to work within thought systems created by the Western world (an effect only magnified through the rise of the internet and globalization). Postcolonial writers are often interested in issues such as migration of people groups (including diasporic groups); the hybrid (but power-laden) mixture of ideas, artifacts, and behaviors between cultures; the liminal spaces between cultures; and the imperialism of ideas (Bhabha, 1994 ). Thus, postcolonialism is inherently about prejudice and oppression beyond racism, though it also has links to racism specifically, as authors consider the ways that some have used racial categories to colonize others (e.g., see essays in Nakayama & Halualani, 2010 ).

Discrimination: Considering the Form(s) of Intolerance

As we have seen, it is difficult to discuss prejudice in general or racism specifically without moving into issues of institutionalized prejudice, media representations, school and government policies, and so on. In this sense, both prejudice and racism are intricately intertwined with discrimination. Discrimination specifically refers to “behavior that denies equal treatment to people because of their membership in some group” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 185). It is based on the “beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of prejudice” (p. 185), but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination. Discrimination involves behavior.

Institutional Discrimination

When we think of institutional-level discrimination, many examples come to mind. These include things like not allowing certain groups housing or refusing other privileges, resources, or opportunities to them. At the writing of this chapter, a popular U.S. media topic is the county clerk, Kim Davis, who refused to give marriage licenses to gays or lesbians based on her faith, despite a state law that allowed her to do so. The Jim Crowe laws of the United States, which gave unequal educational and public access rights to blacks and whites is a classic example, with many facilities being for “whites only.” The website Global Issues (Shah, 2010 ) details instances of racism and racial discrimination around the world, such as racism against white farmers in Zimbabwe and discrimination against the Dalits—the “untouchables” in India.

Genocide and ethnic cleansing

At the extreme end of discrimination, we have genocide and ethnic cleansing . For example, around 1915 , the Ottomon (Turkish) empire slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians (75% of the Turkish Armenian population). The Turkish government took Armenian (largely Christian) children and converted them, giving them to Islamic families. Even today, Turkey defends this “Turkification” of Turkey as a necessary act of war and has resisted the U.S. and other nations defining it as genocide (Armenian genocide, n.d. ). Other genocides have occurred in Central Europe (the Holocaust) in the 1930s–1940s, Rwanda in 2003 , Cambodia in the 1970s, and the Greek/Pontic genocide of World War I. Extreme discrimination includes hate crimes and overt hate groups. The introduction of this chapter noted the prevalence of hate crimes and hate groups within the United States and other nations.

Redlining and racial profiling

In many countries, overt forms of discrimination for many (but seldom all) groups have been outlawed. Institutional discrimination itself may take forms that are harder to name and prove, such as redlining , the process by which banks give fewer mortgages to people of color, based on the belief that they are less able to repay loans. Some real estate agents may steer people of color away from rentals in upscale neighborhoods; school advisers may tell people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or graduate school. In the United States in 2014–2015 , there was a spate of cases surrounding potential police brutality against unarmed black men, leading to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. There is also racial profiling , such as when police pay more attention to people of color, stopping and/or searching them more frequently than they do whites (what some people of color call “DWB” or “driving while black”). A growing and complex array of academic studies examine whether or not profiling exists and, if so, what its nature is (e.g., is it pro-white, or does it depend on the race of the officer?). A similar phenomenon experienced by many people of color is being followed through stores by security guards, regardless of their attire or appearance. Notably, some aspects of discrimination, such as redlining, might be done, at least in the minds of the banker, real estate agent, or high school counselor, without a notion of racial discrimination; but here, Miles’s ( 1989 ) notion of racism defined by exclusionary outcome would classify the behaviors as racist, as they exclude based on supposed biological differences.

Intolerant Communication

Redneck racism/prejudice.

Central to our discussion is the way that discrimination and racism can occur through communicative behavior. Brislin ( 1991 ) outlined several forms of discriminatory communication. In addition to hate crimes and ethnic cleansing, he mentions redneck racism —the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race. He applies these categories to racism, but we can apply them to any group. These might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms ). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of these have some sexual connotation.

Sometimes, the intolerance is slightly veiled though still present, as when we resort to “us/them” language or talk to someone from another group about “your people.” Brislin’s ( 1991 ) notion of arm’s-length prejudice occurs when someone voices tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships, such as marrying a family member (related to Bogardus’s notion of social distance ; Allport, 1979 ). Prejudice might manifest in statements like “She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate,” since such statements assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.

Prejudiced colloquialisms

Prejudice also manifests in our use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame” or “retarded.” Both the harm and use of such phrases has been established. For example, one study found that hearing the phrase “That’s so gay” made gays and lesbians feel less accepted in the university setting and, to a lesser degree, increased reported health problems. Over 45% of the participants had heard the word “gay” linked to something “stupid or undesirable” (Hall & LaFrance, 2012 , p. 430) ten or more times within the last year. Hall and LaFrance ( 2012 ) find a complex interplay between identity—males’ endorsement of gender identity norms andthe desire to distance themselves from homosexuality, as well as the social norms around them, and their likelihood to use the expression.

Prejudice built into language

We might well say that intolerance can be embedded in every level of language. In one classic study, men interrupted women much more than women interrupted men. If women overlapped men, men continued their turn speaking, but if men interrupted women, women yielded their turn speaking (Zimmerman & West, 1975 ). Coates’s ( 2003 ) analysis of narratives told by men in mixed company (such as around the family dinner table) notes that men are both the target and subject of most stories, with dinner table discussion typically centering on patriarchal authority. Research has explored prejudice through verbal and nonverbal behaviors toward people of different ages, people with disabilities, people with different languages or dialects, and other groups, including much theory and research on how we adjust or do not adjust our behavior toward those we perceive to be of different groups (communication accommodation theory; Gallois, Ogay, & Giles, 2005 ) or how minority members must negotiate their communication with dominant group members because of contexts of power and prejudice (co-cultural theory; Orbe & Spellers, 2005 ).

Bar-Tal ( 1990 ) and Zur ( 1991 ) note the way that we use rhetoric to create a sense of others (i.e., to create the identity of the enemy in a way that then justifies discrimination) resonates with Burke’s ( 1967 ) analysis of Hitler’s rhetorical construction of the Jewish people. Collins and Clément ( 2012 ), summarizing research from a special 2007 issue of Journal of Language and Social Psychology on language and discrimination up to the present, summarize the role of language as it pertains to prejudice:

Language is the primary means through which prejudice can be explicitly and implicitly communicated and is, therefore, a major contributor to its transmission and maintenance. But language can also play a more rooted and integral role in prejudice: changing perceptions by distorting the information it carries, focusing attention on social identities, and being a factor in the definition of group boundaries (p. 389).

Intolerance gone underground: Subtle forms of prejudice

As early as the mid-1980s, authors began to argue that in Western societies, racism and other forms of intolerance were going underground (i.e., aware that the redneck varieties of intolerance were socially unacceptable, people expressed less overt intolerance but continued to show intolerance through racism in ways that were “subtle” and “everyday”—a new and modern racism). People might express such forms of racism (and by extension other intolerances) through nonverbal behaviors, such as placing change on the counter instead of in an outgroup member’s hand, or through subtle sayings and word usages that exclude or put down the other person in some way that is not clearly distinguishable as prejudice. In the new racism, minority groups are not spoken of as inferior but as “different,” “although in many respects there are ‘deficiencies,’ such as single-parent families, drug abuse, lacking achievement values, and dependence on welfare and affirmative action—‘pathologies’ that need to be corrected” (van Dijk, 2000 , p. 34). Today, researchers and social activists refer to these subtle manifestations of prejudice as microagressions .

Symbolic racism is similar to subtle racism (Sears & Henry, 2005 ), though it relates more to political attitudes. Researchers have framed symbolic racism to include elements of anti-black sentiment hidden by political attitudes (e.g., that affirmative action has gone too far, that blacks are demanding too much; McConahay, 1986 ). Political research has a corollary in communication in that often, as whites talk about economic or political issues, there is at least a mental if not an explicit verbal coding of race or ethnic “othering.” International ownership of business becomes an issue when Japanese or Chinese companies start buying U.S. businesses, regardless of the large and long-term Dutch and English business holdings in America; discussions about welfare, gangs, and urban decay are often subtly about race. Similar verbal coding may also hold true with other identity groups.

Finally, in terms of face-to-face communication, researchers have explored the notion of “benevolent” intolerance. Discussions of things such as benevolent racism or sexism are often based on a larger notion of benevolent domination, whereby one nation or group seeks to dominate another, supposedly in its best interests (based on Rudyard Kipling’s notion of the “white man’s burden”). For example, Esposito and Romano ( 2014 ) contrast benevolent racism to other forms of post-U.S.-civil-rights forms of racism, such as laissez-faire racism, symbolic racism, and color-blind racism. Each might oppose affirmative action, for example, but for different reasons. Laissez-faire would oppose it based on ideas of meritocracy and free enterprise, blaming blacks themselves for lack of economic progress. Symbolic racism would hold that “the United States is a fair and equitable society where everyone has ample opportunity to succeed through hard work and talent” (p. 74), and that blacks who use the “race card” are hypersensitive—they are “too pushy, too demanding, too angry” (McConahay & Hough, 1976 , p. 38). Color-blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores structural support for inequalities.

Benevolent racism has a long history, even into slavery, a time in which some whites felt they were doing blacks a favor by controlling them and “providing” for them. More recently, it involves a seemingly positive attitude toward blacks that then opposes any social reforms like affirmative action as belittling blacks and working against their natural progress as citizens (Esposito & Romano, 2014 ). Benevolent sexism holds the same basic idea: Rather than sexism being based on anti-woman attitudes, it can also be supported by putting women “on a pedestal,” characterizing them as “pure creatures who ought to be protected, supported, and adored, and whose love is necessary to make a man complete” (Glick & Fiske, 2001 , p. 109). Extensive research has linked such benevolent ideas about women to negative outcomes for them.

Intolerance in the media and on the internet

Finally, many volumes have been written on the issues of stereotypes and intolerance in the media. This includes both social scientific work, such as the cultivation theory research that analyzes both representation of minorities in the media in different countries and the research that considers the effects of such representation. It also includes a wide array of critical and cultural analyses from the cultural studies school. Many of these analyses use the principles discussed—feminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, whiteness, and so on. They work to demonstrate how the media systematically ignore, oversimplify, or negatively represent particular groups. One line of research in this field is the focus on the symbolic annihilation of race (Coleman & Chivers Yochim, 2008 ), which notes how, unlike stereotypes in the media that focus on the presence of some characteristic associated with a group, symbolic annihilation also considers “the meanings associated with absence, omission, or even inclusion that is not so obviously problematic (negative)” (p. 2), in terms of what such absences and seemingly benign images mean.

With the growth of the internet and video gaming, a final area of importance in understanding, researching, and working against prejudice includes all new media. The internet gives impetus for new research to understand hate groups on the media, flaming (e.g., in comments on video-hosting websites such as YouTube), and social media. We see examples of the use of social media for racist purposes in the flurry of racist twitters that followed the crowning of Nina Davuluri, an American of East Indian descent. Research considers both the presence of stereotypes in such media, as well as their effects.

The potential of communication

Unlike some early critical writers, who felt that media imagery (including new media) only produce and reproduce prevailing (prejudiced) ideologies, we must also consider the potential of face-to-face, mediated, and new media as places to challenge oppression. In terms of face-to-face communication, we can work through education to dispel stereotypes. That education can be simply on cultural differences and accomplishments, though changing cognitions alone may not change deeply felt affective prejudice, and only time (as more tolerant individuals assume positions of leadership) will lead to changes in discriminatory social structures. This is why some advocate for political education that addresses both personal and structural prejudice more directly, as well as political action and intervention in media systems.

Many scholars represent interpersonal contact as one of the best ways to address prejudice. Contact theory holds great potential for the planning of interventions to reduce intergroup tensions, as it describes how interpersonal contact with people from outgroups under the right conditions can work by changing both attitudes and affect, especially if people can see the other person as both a member of a new group while still recognizing their original group identity (Dovidio et al., 2003 ). Thomas Pettigrew ( 2016 ) outlines the history of research on authoritarianism (the desire and support for strong authority structures) and relative deprivation (the feeling that one’s group is disadvantaged in comparison to another group) as two of the main predictors of intergroup prejudice. He notes how, while personality factors like authoritarianism and cognitive rigidity are related to greater intolerance and make the likelihood of meaningful intergroup contact more unlikely, even in the presence of these variables, contact programs can have a positive effect for people with prejudice A meta-analysis of 515 contact studies suggests that contact works specifically by increasing knowledge of the other group, decreasing anxiety when one is with the other group, and increasing empathy for the other group (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008 ).

In terms of media, we see both a growth in the production of media that challenges and resists stereotypes, rigid gender constructions, and so on, as well as a growth of grassroots efforts to highlight such oppression. One such effort is the website Fat, Ugly, or Slutty , a site composed of posts contributed by women who are stereotyped or verbally assaulted by men in video gaming websites, usually when the women have beaten them. The women are able to post comments made by other players, their own avatars, and even videos that the men sometimes send them. Efforts like these highlight forms of oppression that occur throughout the internet, but they also highlight the potential of the internet for addressing these forms of oppression in creative ways.

Conclusions

We have seen throughout this article that culture, prejudice, racism, and discrimination are related in complicated ways. Some people even see the characteristics of a particular culture (e.g., mainstream America’s conception of male and female beauty, the definition of a “good” education, or the focus on individualism) as negotiated between people with economic and power interests. Cultures (using the term much more widely than “nation”) are always ethnocentric, with individuals sometimes being xenophobic. But these forms of intolerance are frequently linked to other forms of intolerance—religious, racial, ethnic, and otherwise. Prejudice, most technically, is an affect—a desire to avoid someone because of her or his group, as opposed to stereotypes, which are more cognitive associations with a group—and efforts to reduce prejudice should focus on both affect and cognition. But intolerance is also clearly linked to higher-order manifestations of prejudice, such as discrimination through legal and organizational policies, symbolic annihilation of groups in the media, and everyday forms of discrimination, be they overt or subtle. More likely, communicative and policy forms of prejudice (and their manifest effects in terms of housing, education, job opportunities, and so on) “create” prejudicial perceptions, which in turn create the conditions of discrimination. Racism serves as an example—but only one of many—of the links among attitude, communicative action, policy, and social structure. With this complex view in mind, we can see that any attempts to redress or ameliorate racism or any other intolerance must include not only education, or even merely a wide array of communicative responses (media and face-to-face), but also efforts at addressing social inequalities at the structural and policy levels.

Introduction: The Case for Discrimination Research

Rosita Fibbi 4 ,
Arnfinn H. Midtbøen 5 &
Patrick Simon 6
Open Access
First Online: 09 April 2021

9853 Accesses

Part of the book series: IMISCOE Research Series ((IMIS))

Increasing migration-related diversity in Europe has fostered dramatic changes since the 1950s, among them the rise of striking ethno-racial inequalities in employment, housing, health, and a range of other social domains. These ethno-racial disadvantages can be understood as evidence of widespread discrimination; however, scholarly debates reflect striking differences in the conceptualization and measurement of discrimination in the social sciences. Indeed, what discrimination is, as well as how and why it operates, are differently understood and studied by the various scholarships and scientific fields. It is the ambition of this book to summarize how we frame, study, theorize, and aim at combatting ethno-racial discrimination in Europe.

You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF

European societies are more ethnically diverse than ever. The increasing migration-related diversity has fostered dramatic changes since the 1950s, among them the rise of striking ethno-racial inequalities in employment, housing, health, and a range of other social domains. The sources of these enduring inequalities have been a subject of controversy for decades. To some scholars, ethno-racial gaps in such outcomes are seen as transitional bumps in the road toward integration, while others view structural racism, ethnic hostility, and subtle forms of outgroup-bias as fundamental causes of persistent ethno-racial inequalities. These ethno-racial disadvantages can be understood as evidence of widespread discrimination; however, scholarly debates reflect striking differences in the conceptualization and measurement of discrimination in the social sciences.

What discrimination is, as well as how and why it operates, are differently understood and studied by the various scholarships and scientific fields. A large body of research has been undertaken over the previous three decades, using a variety of methods – qualitative, quantitative, and experimental. These research efforts have improved our knowledge of the dynamics of discrimination in Europe and beyond. It is the ambition of this book to summarize how we frame, study, theorize, and aim at combatting ethno-racial discrimination in Europe.

1.1 Post-War Immigration and the Ethno-racial Diversity Turn

Even though ethnic and racial diversity has existed to some extent in Europe (through the slave trade, transnational merchants, and colonial troops), the scope of migration-related diversity reached an unprecedented level in the period following World War II. This period coincides with broader processes of decolonization and the beginning of mass migration from non-European countries, be it from former colonies to the former metropoles (from the Caribbean or India and Pakistan to the UK; South-East Asia, North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa to France) or in the context of labor migration without prior colonial ties (from Turkey to Germany or the Netherlands; Morocco to Belgium or the Netherlands, etc.).

The ethnic and racial diversity in large demographic figures began in the 1960s (Van Mol and de Valk 2016 ). At this time, most labor migrants were coming from other European countries, but figures of non-European migration were beginning to rise: in 1975, 8% of the population in France and the UK had a migration background, half of which originated from a non-European country. By contrast, in 2014, 9.2% of the population of the EU28 had a migration background from outside of Europe (either foreign born or native-born from foreign-born parent(s)), and this share reached almost 16% in Sweden; 14% in the Netherlands, France, and the UK; and between 10 and 13% in Germany, Belgium, and Austria. The intensification of migration, especially from Asia and Africa, has heightened the visibility of ethno-racial diversity in large European metropolises. Almost 50% of inhabitants in Amsterdam and Rotterdam have a “nonwestern allochthon ” background (2014), 40% of Londoners are black or ethnic minorities (2011), while 30% of Berliners (2013) and 43% of Parisians (metropolitan area; 2009) have a migration background. The major facts of this demographic evolution are not only that diversity has reached a point of “super-diversity” (see Vertovec 2007 ; Crul 2016 ) in size and origins, but also that descendants of immigrants (i.e., the second generation) today make up a significant demographic group in most European countries, with the exception of Southern Europe where immigration first boomed in the 2000s.

The coming of age of the second generation has challenged the capacity of different models of integration to fulfill promises of equality, while the socio-cultural cohesion of European societies is changing and has to be revised to include ethnic and racial diversity. Native-born descendants of immigrants are socialized in the country of their parents’ migration and, in most European countries, share the full citizenship of the country where they live and, consequently, the rights attached to it. However, an increasing number of studies show that even the second generation faces disadvantages in education, employment, and housing that cannot be explained by their lack of skills or social capital (Heath and Cheung 2007 ). The transmission of penalties from one generation to the other – and in some cases an even higher level of penalty for the second generation than for the first – cannot be explained solely by the deficiencies in human, social, and cultural capital, as could have been the case for low-skilled labor migrants arriving in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, the persistence of ethno-racial disadvantages among citizens who do not differ from others except for their ethnic background, their skin color, or their religious beliefs is a testament to the fact that equality for all is an ambition not yet achieved.

Citizenship status may represent a basis for differential treatment. Undoubtedly, citizenship status is generally considered a legitimate basis for differential treatment, which is therefore not acknowledged as discrimination. Indeed, in many European countries, the divide between nationals and European Union (EU) citizens lost its bearing with the extension of social rights to EU citizens (Koopmans et al. 2012 ). Yet, in other countries, and for non-EU citizens, foreign citizenship status creates barriers to access to social subsidies, health care, specific professions, and pensions or exposure to differential treatment in criminal justice. In most countries, voting rights are conditional to citizenship, and the movement to expand the polity to non-citizens is uneven, at least for elections of representatives at the national parliaments. Notably, in countries with restrictive access to naturalization, citizenship status may provide an effective basis for unequal treatment (Hainmueller and Hangartner 2013 ). The issue of discrimination among nationals, therefore, should not overshadow the enduring citizenship-based inequalities.

The gap between ethnic diversity among the population and scarcity of the representation of this diversity in the economic, political, and cultural elites demonstrate that there are obstacles to minorities entering these positions. This picture varies across countries and social domains. The UK, Belgium, or the Netherlands display a higher proportion of elected politicians with a migration background than France or Germany (Alba and Foner 2015 ). Some would argue that it is only a matter of time before newcomers will take their rank in the queue and access the close ring of power in one or two generations. Others conclude that there is a glass ceiling for ethno-racial minorities, which will prove as efficient as that for women to prevent them from making their way to the top. The exception that proves the rule can be found in sports, where athletes with minority backgrounds are often well represented in high-level competitions. The question is how to narrow the gap in other domains of social life, and what this gap tells us about the structures of inequalities in European societies.

1.2 Talking About Discrimination in Europe

Discrimination is as old as human society. However, the use of the concept in academic research and policy debates in Europe is fairly recent. In the case of differential treatment of ethnic and racial minorities, the concept was typically related to blatant forms of racism and antisemitism, while the more subtle forms of stigmatization, subordination, and exclusion for a long time did not receive much attention as forms of “everyday racism” (Essed 1991 ). The turn from explicit racism to more subtle forms of selection and preference based on ethnicity and race paved the way to current research on discrimination. In European societies, where formal equality is a fundamental principle protected by law, discrimination is rarely observed directly. Contrary to overt racism, which is explicit and easily identified, discrimination is typically a hidden part of decisions, selection processes, and choices that are not explicitly based on ethnic or racial characteristics, even though they produce unfair biases. Discrimination does not have to be intentional and it is often not even a conscious part of human action and interaction. While it is clear that discrimination exists, this form of differential treatment is hard to make visible. The major task of research in the field is thus to provide evidence of the processes and magnitude of discrimination. Beyond the variety of approaches in the different disciplines, however, discrimination researchers tend to agree on the starting point: stereotypes and prejudices are nurturing negative perceptions, more or less explicit, of individuals or groups through processes of ethnicization or racialization, which in turn create biases in decision-making processes and serve as barriers to opportunities for these individuals or groups.

Although the concepts of inequality, discrimination, and racism are sometimes used interchangeably, the concept of discrimination entails specificities in terms of social processes, power relations, and legal frameworks that have opened new perspectives to understand ethnic and racial inequalities. The genealogy of the concept and its diffusion in scientific publications still has to be studied thoroughly, and we searched in major journals to identify broad historical sequences across national contexts. Until the 1980s, the use of the concept of discrimination was not widespread in the media, public opinion, science, or policies. In scientific publications, the dissemination of the concept was already well advanced in the US at the beginning of the twentieth century in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery to describe interracial relations. In Europe, there is a sharp distinction between the UK and continental Europe in this regard. The development of studies referring explicitly to discrimination in the UK has a clear link to the post-colonial migration after World War II and the foundation of ethnic and racial studies in the 1960s. However, the references to discrimination remained quite limited in the scientific literature until the 1990s – even in specialized journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies , New Community and its follower Journal for Ethnic and Migration Studies , and more recently Ethnicities – when the number of articles containing the term discrimination in their title or keywords increased significantly. In French-speaking journals, references to discrimination were restricted to a small number of feminist journals in the 1970s and became popular in the 1990s and 2000s in mainstream social science journals. The same held true in Germany, with a slight delay in the middle of the 2000s. Since the 2000s, the scientific publications on discrimination have reached new peaks in most European countries.

The year 2000 stands as a turning point in the development of research and public interest in discrimination in continental Europe. This date coincides with the legal recognition of discrimination by the parliament of the EU through a directive “implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons irrespective of racial or ethnic origin,” more commonly called the “Race Equality Directive.” This directive put ethnic and racial discrimination on the political agenda of EU countries. This political decision contributed to changing the legal framework of EU countries, which incorporated non-discrimination as a major reference and transposed most of the terms of the Race Equality Directive into their national legislation. The implementation of the directive was also a milestone in the advent of the awareness of discrimination in Europe. In order to think in terms of discrimination, there should be a principle of equal treatment applied to everyone, regardless of their ethnicity or race. This principle of equal treatment is not new, but it has remained quite formal for a long time. The Race Equality Directive represented a turning point toward a more effective and proactive approach to achieve equality and accrued sensitivity to counter discrimination wherever it takes place.

The first step to mobilize against discrimination is to launch awareness-raising campaigns to create a new consciousness of the existence of ethno-racial disadvantages. The denial of discrimination is indeed a paradoxical consequence of the extension of formal equality in post-war democratic regimes. Since racism is morally condemned and legally prohibited, it is expected that discrimination should not occur and, thus, that racism is incidental. Incidentally, an opinion survey conducted in 2000 for the European Union Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (which was replaced in 2003 by the Fundamental Rights Agency [FRA]), showed that only 31% of respondents in the EU15 at the time agreed that discrimination should be outlawed. However, the second Eurobarometer explicitly dedicated to studying discrimination in 2007 found that ethnic discrimination was perceived as the most widespread (very or fairly) type of discrimination by 64% of EU citizens (European Commission 2007 ). Almost 10 years later, in 2015, the answers were similar for ethnic discrimination but had increased for all other grounds except gender. Yet, there are large discrepancies between countries, with the Netherlands, Sweden, and France showing the highest levels of consciousness of ethnic discrimination (84%, 84%, and 82%, respectively), whereas awareness is much lower in Poland (31%) and Latvia (32%). In Western Europe, Germany (60%) and Austria (58%) stand out with relatively lower marks (European Commission 2015 ).

These Eurobarometer surveys provide useful information about the knowledge of discrimination and the attitudes of Europeans toward policies against it. However, they focus on the representation of different types of discrimination rather than the personal experience of minority members. To gather statistics on the experience of discrimination is difficult for two reasons: (1) minorities are poorly represented in surveys with relatively small samples in the general population and (2) questions about experiences of discrimination are rarely asked in non-specific surveys. Thanks to the growing interest in discrimination, more surveys are providing direct and indirect variables that are useful in studying the personal experiences of ethno-racial disadvantage.

The European Social Survey, for example, has introduced a question on perceived group discrimination (which is not exactly a personal self-reported experience of discrimination, see Chap. 4 ). In 2007 and 2015, the FRA conducted a specialized survey on discrimination in the 28 EU countries, the Minorities and Discrimination (EU-MIDIS) survey, to fill the gap in the knowledge of the experience of discrimination of ethnic and racial minorities. The information collected is wide ranging; however, only two minority groups were surveyed in each EU country, and the survey is not representative of the population.

Of course, European-wide surveys are not the main statistical sources on discrimination. Administrative statistics, censuses, and social surveys at the national and local levels in numerous countries bring new knowledge of discrimination, either with direct measures when this is the main topic of data collection or more indirectly when they provide information on gaps in employment or education faced by disadvantaged groups. The key point is to be able to identify the relevant population category in relation to discrimination, as we know that ethno-racial groups do not experience discrimination to the same extent. Analyses of immigrants or the second generation as a whole might miss the significant differences between – broadly speaking – European and non-European origins. Or, to put it in a different way, between white and non-white or “visible” minorities. Countries where groups with a European background make up most of the migration-related diversity typically show low levels of discrimination, while countries with high proportions of groups with non-European backgrounds, especially Africans (North and Sub-Saharan), Caribbean people, and South Asians, record dramatic levels of discrimination.

1.3 Who Is Discriminated Against? The Problem with Statistics on Ethnicity and Race

Collecting data on discrimination raises the problem of the identification of minority groups. Migration-related diversity has been designed from the beginning of mass migration based on place of birth of the individuals (foreign born) or their citizenship (foreigners). In countries where citizenship acquisition is limited, citizenship or nationality draws the boundary between “us” and “the others” over generations. This is not the case in countries with more open citizenship regimes where native-born children of immigrants acquire by law the nationality of their country of residence and thus cannot be identified by these variables. If most European countries collect data on foreigners and immigrants, a limited number identify the second generation (i.e., the children of immigrants born in the country of immigration). The question is whether the categories of immigrants and the second generation really reflect the population groups exposed to ethno-racial discrimination. As the grounds of discrimination make clear, nationality or country of birth is not the only characteristic generating biases and disadvantages: ethnicity, race, or color are directly involved. However, if it seems straightforward to define country of birth and citizenship, collecting data on ethnicity, race, or color is complex and, in Europe, highly sensitive.

Indeed, the controversial point is defining population groups by using the same characteristics by which they are discriminated against. This raises ethical, political, legal, and methodological issues. Ethical because the choice to re-use the very categories that convey stereotypes and prejudices at the heart of discrimination entails significant consequences. Political because European countries have adopted a color-blind strategy since 1945, meaning that their political philosophies consider that racial terminologies are producing racism by themselves and should be strictly avoided (depending on the countries, ethnicities receive the same blame). Legal because most European countries interpret the provisions of the European directive on data protection and their transposition in national laws as a legal prohibition. Methodological because there is no standardized format to collect personal information on ethnicity or race and there are several methodological pitfalls commented in the scientific literature. Data on ethnicity per se are collected in censuses to describe national minorities in Eastern Europe, the UK, and Ireland, which are the only Western European countries to produce statistics by ethno-racial categories (Simon 2012 ). The information is collected by self-identification either with an open question about one’s ethnicity or by ticking a box (or several in the case of multiple choices) in a list of categories. None of these questions explicitly mention race: for example, the categories in the UK census refer to “White,” “black British,” or “Asian British” among other items, but the question itself is called the “ethnic group question.”

In the rest of Europe, place of birth and nationality of the parents would be used as proxies for ethnicity in a limited number of countries: Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Belgium to name a few. Data on second generations can be found in France, Germany, and Switzerland among others in specialized surveys with limitations in size and scope. Moreover, the succession of generations since the arrival of the first migrants will fade groups into invisibility by the third generation. This process is already well advanced in the oldest immigration countries, such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Asking questions about the grandparents and the previous generations is not an option since it would require hard decisions to classify those with mixed ancestry (how many ancestors are needed to belong to one category?), not to mention the problems in memory to retrieve all valuable information about the grandparents. This is one of the reasons why traditional immigration countries (USA, Canada, Australia) collect data on ethnicity through self-identification questions.

The discrepancies between official categories and those exposed to discrimination have fostered debates between state members and International Human Rights Organizations – such as the UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) at the Council of Europe, and the EU FRA – which claim that more data are needed on racism and discrimination categorized by ethnicity. The same applies to academia and antiracist NGOs where debates host advocates and opponents to “ethnic statistics.” There is no easy solution, but the accuracy of data for the measurement of discrimination is a strategic issue for both research and policies.

1.4 Discrimination and Integration: Commonalities and Contradictions

How does research on discrimination relate to the broader field of research on immigrant assimilation or integration? On one hand, assimilation/integration and discrimination are closely related both in theory and in empirical studies. Discrimination hinders full participation in society, and the persistence of ethnic penalties across generations contradicts long-term assimilation prospects. On the other hand, both assimilation and integration theory tend to assume that the role of discrimination in shaping access to opportunities will decrease over time. Assimilation is often defined as “the decline of ethnic distinction and its corollary cultural and social difference” (Alba and Nee 2003 , 11), a definition that bears an expectation that migrants and their descendants will over time cease to be viewed as different from the “mainstream population,” reach parity in socioeconomic outcomes, and gradually become “one of us.” In the canonical definition, integration departs from assimilation by considering incorporation as a two-way process. Migrants and ethnic minorities are expected to become full members of a society by adopting core values, norms, and basic cultural codes (e.g., language) from mainstream society, while mainstream society is transformed in return by the participation of migrants and ethnic minorities (Alba et al. 2012 ). The main idea is that convergence rather than differentiation should occur to reach social cohesion, and mastering the cultural codes of mainstream society will alleviate the barriers to resource access, such as education, employment, housing, and rights.

Of course, studies of assimilation and integration do not necessarily ignore that migrants and ethnic minorities face penalties in the course of the process of acculturation and incorporation into mainstream society. In the landmark book, Assimilation in American Life , Milton Gordon clearly spelled out that the elimination of prejudice and discrimination is a key parameter for assimilation to occur; or to use his own terms, that “attitude receptional” and “behavioral receptional” dimensions of assimilation are crucial to complete the process (Gordon 1964 , 81). Yet, ethnic penalties are believed to be mainly determined by human capital and class differences and therefore progressively offset as education level rises, elevating the newcomers to conditions of the natives and reducing the social distance between groups. Stressing the importance of generational progress, assimilation theory thus tends to consider discrimination as merely a short-run phenomenon.

The main blind spots in assimilation and integration theories revolve around two issues: the specific inequalities related to the ethnicization or racialization of non-white minorities and the balance between the responsibilities of the structures of mainstream society and the agencies of migrants and ethnic minorities in the process of incorporation. Along these two dimensions, discrimination research offers a different perspective than what is regularly employed in studies of assimilation and integration.

Discrimination research tends to identify the unfavorable and unfair treatment of individuals or groups based on categorical characteristics and often shows these unfair treatments lie in the activation of stereotypes and prejudices by gatekeepers and the lack of neutrality in processes of selection. In this perspective, what has to be transformed and adapted to change the situation are the structures – the institutions, procedures, bureaucratic routines, etc. – of mainstream society, opening it up to ethnic and racial diversity to enable migrants and ethnic minorities to participate on equal footing with other individuals, independent of their identities. By contrast, in studies of assimilation and integration, explanations of disadvantages are often linked to the lack of human capital and social networks among migrants and ethnic minorities, suggesting that they have to transform themselves to be able to take full part in society. To simplify matters, studies of assimilation and integration often explain persistent disadvantages by pointing to characteristics of migrants and ethnic minorities, while discrimination research explains disadvantages by characteristics of the social and political system.

Both assimilation and integration theories have gradually opened up for including processes of ethnicization and racialization and the consequences of such processes on assimilation prospects. Most prominently, segmented assimilation theory (Portes and Rumbaut 2001 ; Portes and Zhou 1993 ) shifts the focus away from migrants’ adaptation efforts and to the forms of interaction between minority groups – and prominently the second and later generations – and the receiving society. In this variant of assimilation theory, societies are viewed as structurally stratified by class, gender, and race, which powerfully influence the resources and opportunities available to immigrants and their descendants and contribute to shaping alternative paths of incorporation. According to segmented assimilation theory, children of immigrants may end up “ascending into the ranks of a prosperous middle class or join in large numbers the ranks of a racialized, permanently impoverished population at the bottom of society” (Portes et al. 2005 , 1004), the latter outcome echoing worries over persistent ethnic and racial disadvantage. Another possible outcome is upward bicultural mobility (selective acculturation) of the children of poorly educated parents, protected by strong community ties.

The major question arising from these related fields of research – the literature on assimilation and integration, on the one hand, and the literature on discrimination, on the other – is whether the gradual diversification of Europe will result in “mainstream expansion,” in which migrants and their descendants over time will ascend the ladders into the middle and upper classes of the societies they live in, or whether we are witnessing the formation of a permanent underclass along ethnic and racial lines. This book will not provide the ultimate answer to this question. However, by introducing the main concepts, theories, and methods in the field of discrimination, as well as pointing out key research findings, policies that are enacted to combat discrimination, and avenues for future research, we hope to provide the reader with an overview of the field.

1.5 The Content of the Book

The literature on discrimination is flourishing, and it involves a wide range of concepts, theories, methods, and findings. Chapter 2 provides the key concepts in the field. The chapter distinguishes between direct and indirect discrimination as legal and sociological concepts, between systemic and institutional discrimination, and between discrimination as intentional actions, subtle biases, and what might be referred to as the cumulative effects of past discrimination on the present. Chapter 3 reviews the main theoretical explanations of discrimination from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Mirroring the historical development of the field, it presents and discusses theories seeking the cause of prejudice and discrimination at the individual, organizational, and structural levels.

Of course, our knowledge of discrimination depends on the methods of measurement, since the phenomenon is mainly visible through its quantification. Hence, Chapter 4 offers an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of available methods of measurement, including statistical analysis of administrative data, surveys among potential victims and perpetrators, qualitative in-depth studies, legal cases, and experimental approaches to the study of discrimination (including survey experiments, lab experiments, and field experiments).

Importantly, discrimination does not occur similarly in all domains of social life, and it takes different forms according to the domain in question (e.g., the labor market, education, housing, health services, and public services). Chapter 5 taps into the large body of empirical work that can be grouped under the heading “discrimination research” in order to provide some key findings, while simultaneously highlighting a distinction between systems of differentiation and systems of equality.

What happens when discrimination occurs? Chapter 6 addresses the consequences of unfair treatment for targeted individuals and groups, as well as their reaction to it. These individual and collective responses to discrimination are seconded by policies designed to tackle discrimination. However, antidiscrimination policies vary greatly across countries, and Chapter 7 provides an overview of the different types of policies against discrimination in Europe and beyond, both public policies and schemes implemented by organizations. The chapter also reflects on some of the key political and societal debates about the implementation and the future of these policies. Chapter 8 concludes on the future of discrimination research in Europe, stressing the main challenges ahead for a burgeoning scientific field.

Alba, R., & Foner, N. (2015). Strangers no more: Immigration and the challenges of integration in North America and Western Europe . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Book Google Scholar

Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary immigration . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Alba, R., Reitz, J. G., & Simon, P. (2012). National Conceptions of assimilation, integration, and cohesion. In M. Crul & J. H. Mollenkopf (Eds.), The changing face of world cities: Young adult children of immigrants in Europe and the United States (pp. 44–61). New York: Russel Sage.

Google Scholar

Crul, M. (2016). Super-diversity vs. assimilation: How complex diversity in majority–minority cities challenges the assumptions of assimilation. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42 (1), 54–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1061425 .

Article Google Scholar

Essed, P. (1991). Understanding everyday racism: An interdisciplinary theory . Newbury Park: Sage.

European Commission. (2007). Discrimination in the European Union (Special Eurobarometer, Vol. 263). Brussels: European Commission.

European Commission. (2015). Discrimination in the EU in 2015 (Special Eurobarometer, Vol. 437). Brussels: European Commission.

Gordon, M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and National Origins . New York: Oxford University Press.

Hainmueller, J., & Hangartner, D. (2013). Who gets a swiss passport? A natural experiment in immigrant discrimination. American Political Science Review, 107 (01), 159–187. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055412000494 .

Heath, A. F., & Cheung, S. Y. (Eds.). (2007). Unequal chances: Ethnic minorities in Western labour markets . Oxford: British Academy/Oxford University Press.

Koopmans, R., Michalowski, I., & Waibel, S. (2012). Citizenship rights for immigrants. National political processes and cross-national convergence in Western Europe, 1980–2008. American Journal of Sociology, 117 (4), 1202–2045. https://doi.org/10.1086/662707 .

Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. (Eds.). (2001). Legacies: The story of the immigrant second generation . Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation and its variants. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 530 , 74–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716293530001006 .

Portes, A., Fernández-Kelly, P., & Haller, W. (2005). Segmented assimilation on the ground: The new second generation in early adulthood. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28 (6), 1000–1040. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870500224117 .

Simon, P. (2012). Collecting ethnic statistics in Europe: A review. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 35 (8), 1366–1391. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.607507 .

Van Mol, C., & de Valk, H. (2016). Migration and immigrants in Europe: A historical and demographic perspective. In B. Garcés-Mascareñas & R. Penninx (Eds.), Integration processes and policies in Europe (IMISCOE Research Series). Cham: Springer.

Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30 (6), 1024–1054. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870701599465 .

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchatel, Switzerland

Rosita Fibbi

Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway

Arnfinn H. Midtbøen

National Institute for Demographic Studies, Paris, France

Patrick Simon

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Fibbi, R., Midtbøen, A.H., Simon, P. (2021). Introduction: The Case for Discrimination Research. In: Migration and Discrimination. IMISCOE Research Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67281-2_1

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67281-2_1

Published : 09 April 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-67280-5

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-67281-2

eBook Packages : Social Sciences Social Sciences (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
J Educ Health Promot

Justice and unintentional discrimination in health care: A qualitative content analysis

Mohammadjavad hosseinabadi-farahani.

1 Department of Nursing, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Masoud Fallahi-Khoshknab

Narges arsalani, mohammadali hosseini, eesa mohammadi.

2 Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Tarbiat Modares, Tehran, Iran

BACKGROUND:

Discrimination in health care is a common phenomenon whose complete understanding has always been a major concern of health-care systems to control and reduce it. This study aimed to explore the experiences of unintentional discrimination and related factors in health-care providers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

This qualitative study was conducted with a content analysis approach in 2019. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 13 health-care providers including two physicians, three nursing supervisors, two head nurses, four staff nurses, and two nurse aides in two general hospitals in Tehran, Iran. Participants were selected through purposeful sampling. The obtained data were analyzed by Graneheim and Lundman method.

Three main categories and eight subcategories were obtained from the data analysis: (1) forced discrimination (superiors' pressures and executive orders, occupational concerns, and fear of the superiors); (2) guided discrimination (professional challenges, managers' policymaking, and lack of medical ethics knowledge); and (3) lack of resources (workforce shortage and lack of medical equipment).

CONCLUSION:

The results of this study suggest that health-care providers such as doctors and nurses are unintentionally forced to provide discriminatory care on some occasions. Knowing and managing these unwanted factors can partly counteract unintentional discrimination. Thus, preventing the factors that lead to superiors' pressures and occupational forces and improving the medical ethics knowledge should be considered by health-care managers.

Introduction

The ethical principle of justice concerns closely intertwined concepts such as “justice in health,” “discrimination,” and “equity.” The European Institute of Bioethics defines the concepts of justice and equity in health as follows: “justice in health means the lack of systematic and potentially resolvable differences in one or more aspects of health in a population and economic, social and geographical subgroup.” Accordingly, discrimination is the opposite of justice in health-care provision.[ 1 ] Discrimination in health care means a lack of provision, incomplete provision, or different provision of health care to an individual or group of individuals because of their individual and social characteristics.[ 2 , 3 ] Discrimination in health care is experienced by many in the community, but reported only by some,[ 2 ] most of whom are minorities in terms of race, ethnicity, or certain diseases or conditions, such as physical and mental disability.[ 4 ] Discrimination in health care manifests itself in various forms such as discrimination based on sex,[ 5 ] race,[ 6 ] age,[ 7 ] type of illness, religion,[ 8 ] language,[ 9 ] economic status, and social status,[ 10 ] in all of which individual's access to health services is reduced or is of poor quality.

Piette et al . explained the situation in their study as one-third of adults in the US experience discrimination in health care in their daily lives, and that 7% of them experience it several times.[ 11 ] In a study titled “Experienced discrimination amongst European old citizens,” van den Heuvel states that on an average 26% of respondents aged 62 years sometimes and 11% of them always experience age discrimination.[ 12 ] In a study titled “Discrimination Experience and Health Status in Spanish Immigrants,” Rodríguez-Álvarez (2017) reports that at least one per ten immigrants experienced discrimination in receiving health care. They also stated that these discriminations were not due to the age, sex, and educational level of the immigrants, but merely due to their being an immigrant and ethnic differences.[ 13 ] In another study in the UK in 2010, 1301 people over the age of 50 were surveyed, of whom 23% reported that they had experienced age discrimination in the past year.[ 14 ] In addition, studies conducted in 28 European countries have introduced age as the most significant reason for discrimination so that one-fourth of older adults (aged over 62) have sometimes or often experienced age discrimination.[ 15 ]

Discrimination in health-care provision has significant consequences. In several studies, Wheeler (2014), Rodríguez-Álvarez, and Wofford (2019) examined negative consequences and effects of health-care discrimination in its various forms. In a study titled “”The vicarious effects of discrimination: How partner experiences of discrimination affect individual health “ Wofford (2019) states that the experience of discrimination in care leads to a decrease in the confidence of patients and clients, as well as complications such as being exposed to and experiencing multiple stressors and its specific effects, anxiety, depression, hypertension, and even developing specific health problems and risk factors such as obesity, breast cancer, and substance abuse.[ 12 , 13 , 15 , 16 ]

Various organizations, particularly the WHO, have designed and implemented various strategies to combat discrimination in health care such as continuous education of ethical principles for health-care providers, continuous review of health-care policies, supporting community members, and emphasizing their reporting in case of experiencing discrimination in clinical settings,[ 9 , 17 ] but discrimination continues to occur in health-care provision.[ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ] Perhaps, low effectiveness of these policies and strategies can express the fact that they were not based on the full recognition of discrimination dimensions in health care. It is noteworthy that most studies on discrimination are quantitative research on the extent of occurrence and negative consequences, while few have addressed reasons for the emergence and subjective aspect of discriminative behaviors in health-care providers' on the other hand, perceived discrimination is influenced by culture and social factors and is perceived differently by individuals in various societies.[ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ]

Hence, a complete understanding of discrimination in providing health care and related factors is essential to adopt effective strategies for controlling and eliminating discrimination in health care. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the process of unintentional discrimination in health-care provision in Iran.

Materials and Methods

This qualitative study aimed to explore the unintentional discrimination process among health-care providers from June to December 2019. Conventional content analysis approach was used according to the objective of this study. This approach is useful for evaluating the perceived experiences of people about a routine phenomenon.[ 26 ]

The research setting consisted of two hospitals in Tehran, Iran, one of which was a public teaching hospital and the other was a private nonacademic one. Both hospitals provide specialty and subspecialty medical services.

Participants

Up-to-date saturation participants were 13 health-care providers who were employed in two general hospitals in Tehran, selected using purposive sampling with the highest diversity in terms of demographic characteristics (age, sex, work experience, etc.). Table 1 shows the demographic characteristics of the participants.

The demographic characteristics of the participants

ICU=Intensive care unit

Data collection

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. First, interviews started with general questions such as “Have you ever discriminated patients during health-care providing? Please explain your experience” followed by subsequent questions based on the interviewee's answers. The time and place of interviews were planned in coordination with the participants at the hospital private room. The interviews took 20–41 min based on the conditions and willingness of the participants.

Data analysis

All interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed, reviewed, coded, and immediately analyzed by the researcher. The Graneheim and Lundman's[ 27 ] conventional content analysis approach was used for analysis. Based on the content analysis process, initially, each interview was carefully read several times to gain a basic understanding and then important statements were highlighted (to determine the initial codes or semantic units contained in the transcripts of the interview about participants' experience of unintentional discrimination). In the next step, similar semantic units were extracted for semantic clarity and labeled as categories and subcategories. In fact, data were analyzed consistently and concurrently with data collection. The data were added throughout the data collection process until data saturation.

The Strauss and Corbin's (2015) method was used to validate the data, which combines the criteria presented by different researchers. Accordingly, the researcher tried to gain their trust and understand their experiences with long-term engagement, contact, and communication with the participants. Data validation methods were used to eliminate any ambiguity in coding through reviewing transcripts by the participants (member check). To this end, the researcher provided parts of the interviews and codes to the participants to reach the same understanding as the participants. Confirm ability was also checked to confirm the systematic and unbiased collection of data; members' agreement on interviews, codes, and classification of similar codes; and categories and comparison of what the researcher understood and what the participants meant. Data reliability was exercised with immediate transcription, peer check, and review of the whole data.

Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of Tehran University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences (Ethics code: IR. USWR. REC.1398.023). In addition, the participants studied and signed the informed consent form for participating in this study. They were assured of the confidentiality of the information, and that the participants could withdraw from the study anytime.

Participants were 13 health-care providers including two physicians, three supervisors, two head nurses, four nurses, and two nurse aids. The age of the participants ranged from 32 to 53 years. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the participants. The findings of this study helped the researcher identify the following three main categories: (1) forced discrimination, (2) guided discrimination, and (3) discrimination related to lack of resources [ Table 2 ].

“Unintentional discrimination” with subcategories and open codes

Category 1 Forced discrimination

Forced discrimination category indicates that health-care providers are forced to discriminate in health-care provision to maintain their jobs or to comply with orders. This category was formed based on the subcategories of (1) superiors' pressures and executive orders, (2) occupational concerns, and (3) fear of the superiors, based on the analysis of initial codes.

Superiors' pressures and executive orders

In the subcategory of superiors' pressures and executive orders, the participants expressed that sometimes they had to discriminate in health-care provision to patients due to the pressure that higher authorities such as the president, manager, or nursing office applied on them. For example, participant = P (12) said:

“It's an order, or the patient is a relative of a colleague and I'm asked to keep the bed beside them vacant, but I'm not doing this for other people. However, these are orders and I have to follow them” (head nurse of the internal surgery ward, 48 years old, 25 years of experience).

P (9) also said: “When the nursing office calls me and recommends a patient and says that I, as the head nurse, should watch over them, what else can I say? I say OK” (head nurse of the surgery ward, 38 years old, 15 years of experience).

P (10) also said:

“Because of frequent calls made by the president for a number of patients admitted to the ICU, I act differently, I spend more time and precision on the patient” (anesthesiologist, 48 years old, 22 years of experience).

Occupational concerns

Another initial subcategory was occupational concerns where participants expressed the reason for discrimination in health-care provision as occupational concerns, such as fear of losing their job and their current position. For example, P (2) said:

“I and the rest of the nurses pay more respect to special and recommended patients; this is ordered by the organization to maintain our job and position. We do this as we have no other choice since it might be hard to find a job somewhere else” (nurse of the gynecology ward, 33 years old, 8 years of experience).

Fear of the superiors

Fear of the superiors was another initial subcategory emerging from the code analysis. The participants noted that sometimes the only reason for which they must provide different care or other forms of communication with the patient is a fear of superiors such as a supervisor or a head nurse. For example, P (8) said:

“I sometimes pay more attention to some patients, I don't know why it is so, it has always been like that, and head nurses always say this to me and other nurse aids. It has been due to our fear of the head nurse or even behavior of some physicians” (nurse aid, 35 years old, 12 years of experience).

Category 2 Guided discrimination

This category refers to the fact that lack of professionalism in medical science majors in Iran, which can be attributed to failure to explain ethical codes as well as the lack of knowledge and training on the principles of medical ethics for physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers, which made health-care providers to have discriminatory behaviors. This category has three subcategories of professional challenges, managers' policymaking, and lack of medical ethics knowledge.

Professional challenges

This subcategory refers to the occupational nature of health-care professions and being involved in their problems. For instance, high workload and fatigue are factors that make service providers exhibit discriminatory behaviors unintentionally as P (11) said:

“If I'm very tired or working at night shifts for several days, I actually do not care much for the patient and neglect many things, or if I'm to do something, I'll do it for some special patients that I have to” (nurse aid, 36 years old, 10 years of experience).

P (7) also said:

“I've seen that doctors or nurses generally attend to patients less at nights and they somewhat discriminate among patients. They don't check the operation site, or they do less suctioning; generally medical and nursing care reduces and maybe it is due to personnel fatigue” (ICU nurse, 33 years old, 10 years of experience).

Managers' policymaking

This subcategory refers to some of the internal policies of health managers that may cause unintentional discrimination among staff by setting certain policies or less supervision. The participants also pointed out that one of the main causes of fighting discrimination is the very managers' will. For example, P (12) said:

“The one at the top of this system must want it to happen; a simple example is visiting patients; some of my colleagues here work in another hospital, too. I went to visit a patient, but they didn't allow me, even though they knew me, they didn't let me visit outside the specified time. The two hospitals are located next to each other and both affiliated to one university, but there is so much difference. It all goes back to the top of the pyramid and management. How much the manager wants to fix the system matters?” (head nurse of the internal surgery ward, 48 years old, 25 years of experience).

Lack of medical ethics knowledge

Lack of knowledge of ethics codes, lack of medical ethics knowledge, and lack of understanding of these principles at university make health-care providers pay less attention to these principles and unintentionally discriminate in the provision of health care. For example, P (3) said:

“Training on ethics was absolutely insufficient. There must be training during medical and nursing courses, but unfortunately it is not so; not even in medical ethics courses, such a problem has become so common among us and all have accepted it. So first and foremost is the teaching and learning of ethical principles at university” (emergency physician, 40 years old, 16 years of experience).

Category 3 Lack of resources

This category refers to the resources needed to provide health services, but when these resources are defective or scarce, the health-care provider is unintentionally forced to discriminate. Two subcategories of discrimination due to workforce shortage and lack of medical equipment emerged from the data analysis.

Workforce shortage

The shortage of physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers unintentionally forces health-care providers to discriminate as it leads to failure in providing the necessary care and even reducing the quality of services. P (9) said:

“As a head nurse, manpower is very important to me; when manpower is low, the quality of work reduces and now if we have some special and recommended patients in the ward, a significant portion of the manpower is dedicated to them and the quality work for other patients decreases and other patients get less attention because we are not enough” (head nurse of the surgery ward, 38 years old, 15 years of experience).

P (6) also said:

“How can I, as a nurse of the internal ward with 10 patients and one of them intubated, handle them all, I have to discriminate, and those who have better conditions will receive more care; I have no choice; we are not enough” (ICU nurse, 33 years old, 8 years of experience).

Lack of medical equipment

Lack of medical equipment also makes physicians and nurses unintentionally discriminate between patients due to access restrictions. For example, P (6) said:

“Healthcare provision is better in ICUs, but lower and poorer in regular wards because a nurse like me has 8–10 patients there and one is intubated, and I don't have time or even monitors to permanently check on them. There, I have to differentiate among patients, and care for a patient only for 2 h in a whole 12-h shift because I don't have the time or the equipment to do it” (ICU nurse, 33 years old, 8 years of experience).

All participants expressed that they had to discriminate in health-care provision in different circumstances. In fact, the participants stated that they are forced to make ethically incorrect decisions and disobey ethical principles unintentionally when providing health care due to reasons such as fear of superiors. In this regard, Kligyte et al . pointed out that fear, worry, and anger can inhibit ethical decision-making. Health-care providers cannot consider justice in their nursing and care plane; finally, patients experience different types of discrimination in health care. In fact, they have no choice and they had to have discriminatory behaviors with patients.[ 28 ]

Furthermore, our findings showed that forced discrimination affects the working environment of physicians, nurses, and other health-care providers, which creates conditions in which they cannot observe the four principles of bioethics, the principle of justice. The participants stated that they discriminate in the provision of health care to patients due to pressure from managers and officials. In fact, it can be argued that the environment in which health-care providers perform their duties can have a positive or negative approach and result in implementing the principles of bioethics. Professional ethics refers to the use of logical and consistent communication, knowledge, clinical skills, emotions, and values in practice. In this regard, Dehghani et al . point out that factors influencing compliance to professional ethics are divided into the following three dimensions: (1) individual dimension (personal characteristics, religious values, and family conditions); (2) organizational dimension (leadership, management, communication with colleagues, rewards and punishment system, organizational culture, etc.); and (3) environmental dimension (economic, social, and cultural). The organizational dimension is more important because it can control and make more changes. Personal ethical decision-making is related to organizational ethical atmosphere, so the viewpoint of manager in health care can change the ethical behaviors of health-care providers.[ 29 ]

Managers' pressure on medical personnel to do things that contradict medical and nursing ethics reflects the ethics that govern an organization such as a hospital. In fact, the ethical behavior of managers in the health-care system is a predictor of observing professional ethics. Kaabomeir et al . quote Douglas emphasizing that if managers and senior executives apply ethics in the workplace, an ethical climate dominates the organization, which can influence other people. According to a survey by the Institute of Business Ethics, managers' adherence to ethics can reduce employees' unethical behavior by up to 50%. Furthermore, ethical decision-making by medical personnel is affected by factors such as fear and anger.[ 30 ]

In addition, our findings showed that some factors such as lack of medical ethics knowledge and lack of professionalism lead health-care providers to discrimination. In fact, these factors occur in the context of medical and nursing care, which reduces the focus on the structure needed to implement ethics. As mentioned in the results, the participants stated that lack of professionalism makes them pay less attention to observing the principle of justice in health-care provision. It is important that professionalism requires the development of and compliance with codes of ethics, as it can be seen in developing countries such as Iran, where medical professions are not completely professionalized, which eventually manifests itself in the form of noncompliance with the principles of medical ethics.[ 31 ] In this regard, Mahajan et al . point out that ethics is an integral part of becoming a medical professional. Furthermore, they emphasized that if the professionalism process is not accomplished properly, graduates would not understand ethical principles and cannot comply with ethical principles such as justice in health care.[ 32 ]

Lack of knowledge about the principles of medical ethics was also mentioned by the participants. In fact, health-care providers such as physicians and nurses that have the highest levels of communication with the patient and need to consider health-care ethics, ultimately provide health-care services that are practically not ethical because they lack the required knowledge. In fact, the lack of training on the principles of bioethics, health justice, leads health-care providers to discriminate in health care. Accordingly, Imran et al . suggest that medical students at general and specialty levels that have not received education on these principles are not capable of making necessary decisions and observing ethical principles such as independence and justice, which affects their professional qualifications, too.[ 33 ] Dehghani et al . pointed out that teaching and learning professional ethics principles at university are among important and effective factors in the formation of nurses' ethical behaviors.[ 29 ]

The importance of learning the principles of bioethics while studying medical sciences and its incorporation is another aspect of this process. As shown by the results, the participants mentioned a lack of education and learning of bioethics principles in universities as a cause of discrimination in providing health care. In this regard, Bostani pointed out that systematic incorporation of bioethics principles in nursing education programs, while familiarizing them with ethical principles, will improve the quality of nursing care, ethical decision-making, and compliance with these principles to provide health care to patients.[ 34 ] Acharya and Shakya (2016 also emphasized that the four principles of bioethics should be emphasized in medical students' curricula in order to respect and maintain patient autonomy, promote justice, and avoid discriminatory behaviors in health.[ 35 ]

Lack of resources, including workforce and medical equipment, was another aspect of unintentional discrimination in health care. As shown by the results, the participants stated that they are forced to unintentionally differentiate between patients and have discriminatory behaviors in health-care delivery when they face challenges such as shortage of doctors and nurses at work.[ 36 , 37 , 38 ] The global challenge of shortage of nurses in recent decades is a major concern for health-care organizations, which leads to physical and psychological harm, job dissatisfaction, burnout, and so forth. What is noticeable here is the effect of lack of resources on bioethical principles governing health-care provision such that this challenge has led to a phenomenon known as moral distress among nurses, which in turn has extensive negative consequences and causes a vicious cycle.[ 39 ] In fact, health-care providers tend to adhere to the ethics of health care based on their professional duty, but the question is how can they provide quality care based on ethics when professionals such as physicians and nurses are not sufficient? In fact, they have no choice but to abandon some of these ethical principles when providing health care because under the present conditions, physical care is prioritized and ethical principles such as justice in care are less attended to.

Different articles have been conducted on health-care discrimination, but they are quantitative, and we cannot survey the main problems about discrimination in health care. This study was a qualitative article, so we could detect the main category of unintentional discrimination in health care. According to these findings, we can design an effective model for controlling discrimination in health care.

Every article has some limitations, so the authors reiterate that this study was based on Iranian culture and health-care system, so the results cannot be generalized to other countries, and it is recommended that similar studies be conducted in other countries.

The findings of this study showed three categories of unintentional discrimination including forced discrimination, guided discrimination, and lack of resources. In this study, the participants emphasized that they unintentionally discriminate health-care provision to patients due to various factors, including managers' pressure and lack of resources, as well as professional challenges such as lack of medical ethics knowledge. This study could clarify the concept of discrimination in health care, and it is recommended that health-care managers use the results of this study to plan and implement measures to control and reduce discrimination in health care.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This study was extracted from a Ph.D. thesis in nursing approved on May 29, 2019, in Tehran University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The researchers would like to sincerely thank all participants in this study including physicians, nurses, and nurse aids.

Essays About Discrimination: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

You must know how to connect with your readers to write essays about discrimination effectively; read on for our top essay examples, including prompts that will help you write.

Discrimination comes in many forms and still happens to many individuals or groups today. It occurs when there’s a distinction or bias against someone because of their age, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.

Discrimination can happen to anyone wherever and whenever they are. Unfortunately, it’s a problem that society is yet to solve entirely. Here are five in-depth examples of this theme’s subcategories to guide you in creating your essays about discrimination.

1. Essay On Discrimination For Students In Easy Words by Prateek

2. personal discrimination experience by naomi nakatani, 3. prejudice and discrimination by william anderson, 4. socioeconomic class discrimination in luca by krystal ibarra, 5. the new way of discrimination by writer bill, 1. my discrimination experience, 2. what can i do to stop discrimination, 3. discrimination in my community, 4. the cost of discrimination, 5. examples of discrimination, 6. discrimination in sports: segregating men and women, 7. how to stop my discrimination against others, 8. what should groups do to fight discrimination.

“In the current education system, the condition of education and its promotion of equality is very important. The education system should be a good place for each and every student. It must be on the basis of equal opportunities for each student in every country. It must be free of discrimination.”

Prateek starts his essay by telling the story of a student having difficulty getting admitted to a college because of high fees. He then poses the question of how the student will be able to get an education when he can’t have the opportunity to do so in the first place. He goes on to discuss UNESCO’s objectives against discrimination.

Further in the essay, the author defines discrimination and cites instances when it happens. Prateek also compares past and present discrimination, ending the piece by saying it should stop and everyone deserves to be treated fairly.

“I thought that there is no discrimination before I actually had discrimination… I think we must treat everyone equally even though people speak different languages or have different colors of skin.”

In her short essay, Nakatani shares the experiences that made her feel discriminated against when she visited the US. She includes a fellow guest saying she and her mother can’t use the shared pool in a hotel they stay in because they are Japanese and getting cheated of her money when she bought from a small shop because she can’t speak English very well.

“Whether intentional or not, prejudice and discrimination ensure the continuance of inequality in the United States. Even subconsciously, we are furthering inequality through our actions and reactions to others… Because these forces are universally present in our daily lives, the way we use them or reject them will determine how they affect us.”

Anderson explains the direct relationship between prejudice and discrimination. He also gives examples of these occurrences in the past (blacks and whites segregation) and modern times (sexism, racism, etc.)

He delves into society’s fault for playing the “blame game” and choosing to ignore each other’s perspectives, leading to stereotypes. He also talks about affirmative action committees that serve to protect minorities.

“Something important to point out is that there is prejudice when it comes to people of lower class or economic standing, there are stereotypes that label them as untrustworthy, lazy, and even dangerous. This thought is fed by the just-world phenomenon, that of low economic status are uneducated, lazy, and are more likely to be substance abusers, and thus get what they deserve.”

Ibarra recounts how she discovered Pixar’s Luca and shares what she thought of the animation, focusing on how the film encapsulates socioeconomic discrimination in its settings. She then discusses the characters and their relationships with the protagonist. Finally, Ibarra notes how the movie alluded to flawed characters, such as having a smaller boat, mismatched or recycled kitchen furniture, and no shoes.

The other cast even taunts Luca, saying he smells and gets his clothes from a dead person. These are typical things marginalized communities experience in real life. At the end of her essay, Ibarra points out how society is dogmatic against the lower class, thinking they are abusers. In Luca, the wealthy antagonist is shown to be violent and lazy.

“Even though the problem of discrimination has calmed down, it still happens… From these past experiences, we can realize that solutions to tough problems come in tough ways.”

The author introduces people who called out discrimination, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Barbara Henry – the only teacher who decided to teach Ruby Bridges, despite her skin color.

He then moves on to mention the variations of present-day discrimination. He uses Donald Trump and the border he wants to build to keep the Hispanics out as an example. Finally, Bill ends the essay by telling the readers those who discriminate against others are bullies who want to get a reaction out of their victims.

Do you get intimidated when you need to write an essay? Don’t be! If writing an essay makes you nervous, do it step by step. To start, write a simple 5 paragraph essay .

Prompts on Essays About Discrimination

Below are writing prompts that can inspire you on what to focus on when writing your discrimination essay:

Essays About Discrimination: My discrimination experience

Have you had to go through an aggressor who disliked you because you’re you? Write an essay about this incident, how it happened, what you felt during the episode, and what you did afterward. You can also include how it affected the way you interact with people. For example, did you try to tone down a part of yourself or change how you speak to avoid conflict?

List ways on how you can participate in lessening incidents of discrimination. Your list can include calling out biases, reporting to proper authorities, or spreading awareness of what discrimination is.

Is there an ongoing prejudice you observe in your school, subdivision, etc.? If other people in your community go through this unjust treatment, you can interview them and incorporate their thoughts on the matter.

Tackle what victims of discrimination have to go through daily. You can also talk about how it affected their life in the long run, such as having low self-esteem that limited their potential and opportunities and being frightened of getting involved with other individuals who may be bigots.

For this prompt, you can choose a subtopic to zero in on, like Workplace Discrimination, Disability Discrimination, and others. Then, add sample situations to demonstrate the unfairness better.

What are your thoughts on the different game rules for men and women? Do you believe these rules are just? Cite news incidents to make your essay more credible. For example, you can mention the incident where the Norwegian women’s beach handball team got fined for wearing tops and shorts instead of bikinis.

Since we learn to discriminate because of the society we grew up in, it’s only normal to be biased unintentionally. When you catch yourself having these partialities, what do you do? How do you train yourself not to discriminate against others?

Focus on an area of discrimination and suggest methods to lessen its instances. To give you an idea, you can concentrate on Workplace Discrimination, starting from its hiring process. You can propose that applicants are chosen based on their skills, so the company can implement a hiring procedure where applicants should go through written tests first before personal interviews.

If you instead want to focus on topics that include people from all walks of life, talk about diversity. Here’s an excellent guide on how to write an essay about diversity .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

View all posts

Downloadable Content

Discrimination in the Public Sector and its Issues

Masters Thesis
Mantashyan, Siranush
Valiquette L'Heureux, Anais
Clark, Shauna
Nufrio, Philip
California State University, Northridge
Public Sector Management and Leadership
Dissertations, Academic -- CSUN -- Public Administration.
2019-08-21T19:56:03Z
http://hdl.handle.net/10211.3/212890
by Siranush Mantashyan

Essays and Commentary

Reflections and analysis inspired by the killing of George Floyd and the nationwide wave of protests that followed.

My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children

Two women, one is author’s mother, Marie Als, left at a table.

She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees—confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died.

By Hilton Als

June 21, 2020

How do we change america.

A group of protesters making a large shadow

The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone.

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

June 8, 2020

The purpose of a house.

A teenage girl hiding her face in front of a laptop.

For my daughters, the pandemic was a relief from race-related stress at school. Then George Floyd was killed.

By Emily Bernard

June 25, 2020

The players’ revolt against racism, inequality, and police terror.

A row of players for the Washington Mystics kneeling on a basketball court with their backs to the viewers wearing white shirts that have seven bullet holes drawn on each player's backs. The basketball court also has "Black Lives Matter" painted on it and there is a large "WNBA" sign in the background.

A group of athletes across various American professional sports have communicated the fear, frustration, and anger of most of Black America.

September 9, 2020, until black women are free, none of us will be free.

An illustrated portrait of Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith and the Black feminist visionaries of the Combahee River Collective.

July 20, 2020, john lewis’s legacy and america’s redemption.

The civil-rights leader, who died Friday, acknowledged the darkest chapters of the country’s history, yet insisted that change was always possible.

By David Remnick

July 18, 2020

Europe in 1989, america in 2020, and the death of the lost cause.

Protesters raise their fists in the air at the Robert E. Lee Statue

A whole vision of history seems to be leaving the stage.

By David W. Blight

July 1, 2020

The messy politics of black voices—and “black voice”—in american animation.

Scene from "Big Mouth";" the character Missy is in the center.

Cartoons have often been considered exempt from the country’s prejudices. In fact, they form a genre built on the marble and mud of racial signification.

By Lauren Michele Jackson

June 30, 2020

After george floyd and juneteenth.

People marching wave at a group of toddlers watching.

What’s ahead for the movement, the election, and the protesters?

June 20, 2020, juneteenth and the meaning of freedom.

Image may contain: Symbol, Flag, Text, and American Flag

Emancipation is a marker of progress for white Americans, not black ones.

By Jelani Cobb

June 19, 2020

A memory of solidarity day, on juneteenth, 1968.

Protestors wading in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in 1968.

The public outpouring over racism that has been taking place in America since George Floyd’s murder feels like a long-postponed renewal of the reckoning that shook the nation more than half a century ago.

By Jon Lee Anderson

June 18, 2020

Seeing police brutality then and now.

We still haven’t fully recognized the art made by twentieth-century black artists.

By Nell Painter

The History of the “Riot” Report

Scene of officer holding gun and frisking two black men.

How government commissions became alibis for inaction.

By Jill Lepore

June 15, 2020

The trayvon generation.

For Solo, Simon, Robel, Maurice, Cameron, and Sekou.

By Elizabeth Alexander

So Brutal a Death

Nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s brutal killing by police officers resonates with immigrants, and with people around the world.

By Edwidge Danticat

An American Spring of Reckoning

In death, George Floyd’s name has become a metaphor for the stacked inequities of the society that produced them.

June 14, 2020, the mimetic power of d.c.’s black lives matter mural.

The pavement itself has become part of the protest.

By Kyle Chayka

June 9, 2020

Donald trump’s fascist performance.

President Donald Trump walking with a group of people

To the President, power sounds like gunfire and helicopters; it sounds like the silence of men in uniform when they are asked who they are.

By Masha Gessen

June 3, 2020

Books & Culture
Fiction & Poetry
Humor & Cartoons
Puzzles & Games

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change (2016)

Chapter: 6 conclusions and recommendations, 6 conclusions and recommendations, lessons learned, experiences of other countries.

The experiences of Australia, Canada, and England (see Chapter 4 ) strongly indicate that changing negative social norms that stigmatize people with mental and substance use disorders will require a coordinated and sustained effort. Behavioral health-related norms and beliefs are created and reinforced at multiple levels, including day-to-day contact with people affected by mental and substance use disorders, organizational policies and practices, community norms and beliefs, the media, and governmental law and policy. Successful national-scale anti-stigma programs in other countries shared the following characteristics:

They were supported by government at the national level.
Support was committed on a long-term basis, often over decades.
There was ongoing evaluation and monitoring from the planning phase forward.
The initiative was multipronged to address the full range of relevant needs.
Programs and services were coordinated across states (provinces) and across economic and social sectors to reduce fragmentation of efforts.
Information was collected and disseminated about what worked, with whom, and under which conditions in order to inform the ongoing program development as well as future programs.

The Ryan White Act

In the United States, the Ryan White Care Act (RWCA) provides an example of a coordinated and sustained effort to meet the full spectrum of needs in people with HIV/AIDS. The act was initially passed by Congress in 1990 and has since been reauthorized four times in 1996, 2000, 2006, and 2009. The act supports programs and services at the community, municipal, and state level across the nation. Over the past 25 years, the Ryan White Program has become a critical component of the HIV/AIDS health care system in the United States, serving more than one-half million people ( Crowley and Kates, 2013 ). The history, evolution, and outcomes of the program provide relevant information for future behavioral health anti-stigma initiatives.

The Ryan White Program has evolved to embrace a focus on treatment as prevention, which is consistent with the goals of the Affordable Care Act and the U.S. National HIV/AIDS Strategy. Ongoing evaluation and outcomes research provide future direction for the program, most recently in the areas of health workforce development, insurance coverage, and efforts to scale up programs to achieve population-level impacts ( Crowley and Garner, 2015 ).

The Ryan White Program funds social support-related services in addition to traditional health care and prescription drug programs, including transportation and housing assistance, nutrition services, day care, and dental care ( Taylor, 2010 ). Such “wrap-around” services are provided within the context of an integrated model of care to improve quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS who face many of the stigma-related barriers as individuals with mental and substance use disorders ( Garfield, 2011 ). Funding is awarded through statutorily established formula grants and through competitive mechanisms with the bulk of funds distributed noncompetitively in response to evolving needs.

One critique of RWCA is that the act did not establish minimum standards for care and services delivery across all states. For example, the act funded AIDS Drug Assistance Programs that were managed by individual states with the states deciding how to allocate funding and set eligibility for enrollment. At the program’s peak height in September 2011, more than 9,000 people with HIV were on state medication waiting lists. Although state and local autonomy regarding implementation and delivery is essential, lessons learned from the AIDS Drug Assistance Programs underscore the need for unifying program standards and illustrate the

important role of the federal government in a national strategy to reduce stigma related to mental and substance use disorders.

An Ecological Framework

Research on stigma toward mental and substance use disorders is challenging and complex in part because it necessarily involves a wide range of independent service systems, numerous sectors and professions, competing agendas, nuanced ethical and cultural issues, and multiple levels of outcome analysis ranging from the individual level to national statistics. Coordinating research across these many layers and systems will require a strategic and harmonious effort on the part of the federal government, private foundations, and academic and health care institutions, and other stakeholders. A coordinated research effort should be finely tuned to the societal and cultural contexts that intentionally or unintentionally endorse or facilitate stigma at various levels, especially the structural level. One assumption of an ecological perspective is that society’s tolerance for or endorsement of a negative norm sets a precedent for stigma at the individual, family, and community levels ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014 ). This underscores the need to focus more attention on eliminating structural stigma (see Recommendation 2 ).

Understanding the processes by which factors at the individual, family, community, and social levels interact to produce and maintain stigma will require multidisciplinary, multimethod, and multisector approaches. Research will need to leverage and build on the existing knowledge base related to mental and substance use disorders, stigma change, and other relevant and related fields. Finally, effective research needs to consider the cultural processes, social stratification, ecological variations, and immigrant/acculturation status that are pertinent to understanding the causes and consequences mental and substance disorder stigma ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014 . These sociocultural factors are critical elements to consider in developing and testing intervention strategies and in adapting evidence-based practices to unique populations and target audiences to ensure cultural relevance, reach, efficacy, and adoption ( Barrera et al., 2013 ).

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A national-level approach.

CONCLUSION: The experiences of the U.S. campaigns related to HIV/AIDS and of anti-stigma campaigns in Australia, Canada, and

England demonstrate the need for a coordinated and sustained effort over 2 or more decades to reduce the stigma associated with mental and substance use disorders.

Norms and beliefs related to behavioral health, such as the stigma associated with mental and substance use disorders, are created and reinforced at multiple levels, including day-to-day contact with affected individuals, organizational policies and practices, community norms and beliefs, the media, and governmental law and policy. A number of private and public organizations are already engaged in anti-stigma and mental health promotion efforts, but because these efforts are largely uncoordinated and poorly evaluated, they cannot provide an evidence base for future national efforts.

RECOMMENDATION 1: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should take the lead responsibility among federal partners and key stakeholders in the design, implementation, and evaluation of a multipronged, evidence-based national strategy to reduce stigma and to support people with mental and substance use disorders.

Relevant stakeholder groups would include the following:

consumers in treatment for mental and substance use disorders and consumer organizations;
families and others whose lives are touched by mental illness or substance use disorders, including suicide-attempt survivors and loss survivors;
relevant private sector leadership, including major employers;
relevant foundations and nongovernmental organizations;
advocates and advocacy groups, including civil rights and disability law experts;
insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers;
journalists and others in the news media, including public health media experts;
health and behavioral health care providers, and administrators, including protective services and social services providers;
health professional education institutions and professional associations;
academic researchers, including suicide prevention experts and researchers;
law enforcement officials and first responders; and
representatives of federal, state, and local governments.

Early tasks would include the following:

Identify a lead organization to serve as convener of stakeholders.
Promote coordination and engagement across local, state, federal, and nongovernmental groups, including the U.S. Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Justice, and Labor, and relevant stakeholder groups to pool resources and promote evidence-based approaches.
Evaluate current laws and regulations related to persons with mental and substance use disorders to identify opportunities to promote changes to support people on the path to recovery.
Support the development of a strategic plan for research and dissemination of evidence about effective strategies to change social norms related to mental and substance use disorders (see Recommendation 3 ).
With the federal agencies and other partners, develop a process of identifying and engaging grassroots efforts in each state to promote the implementation of evidence-based programs and fidelity monitoring of service delivery.
With the federal agencies, establish a long-term, national monitoring system for stigma and stigma reduction.

Collaboration and Coordination

In 2013, eight federal agencies were identified as having programs to support individuals with mental and substance use disorders—the U.S. Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing, Justice, Labor, Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration—although their specific mission goals vary. To improve the effectiveness and extend the reach of the federal agencies’ programs, there are some ongoing efforts to coordinate across the agencies and their programs ( U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2014 ).

To maximize desired outcomes, collaborative efforts should eschew “ownership” of programs and include cobranding and resource sharing. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA’s) ongoing engagement with stakeholders can support the search for common ground, mutually articulated goals, and shared agendas.

The committee has identified structural stigma and stereotypes of dangerousness and unpredictability as major sources of public and self-stigma. Given the importance of reducing stigma in these areas, early efforts could focus on development of a communications campaign that

targeted policy and decision makers to challenge specific laws, policies and regulations that discriminate against people with mental and substance use disorders. Such a campaign could develop evidence-based public service announcements to hold in readiness for tragic events, such as mass violence, suicide by school and college students, and suicide clusters.

CONCLUSION: Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, based on the best possible evidence, which are supported at the national level and planned and implemented by a representative coalition of stakeholders. Engaging a wide range of stakeholders would facilitate consensus building and provide the support needed to overcome major obstacles to the implementation of effective anti-stigma programs in the United States. Barriers and challenges include, but are not limited to, conflict among major stakeholder groups regarding best practices and priorities, resource constraints, and the need to target multiple audiences with variable perceptions and priorities, as well as shifting priorities at the national level.

RECOMMENDATION 2: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should evaluate its own service programs and collaborate with other stakeholders, particularly the criminal justice system and government and state agencies, for the purpose of identifying and eliminating policies, practices, and procedures that directly or indirectly discriminate against people with mental and substance use disorders.

Strategic Planning for Research

The committee defines strategic planning as the process undertaken by an agency or organization to define its future and formulate a detailed plan to guide its path from the current state to its vision for the future.

CONCLUSION: A planning process usually results in the development of a key document that includes a plan to ensure that communication is maintained across all stakeholders. This element is especially relevant for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration given the agency’s ongoing engagement with stakeholders and collaborators. A strategic plan can also serve as the basis of comparison for an ongoing plan for iterative effectiveness monitoring.

RECOMMENDATION 3: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should conduct formative and evaluative research as part of a strategically planned effort to reduce stigma.

SAMHSA’s ongoing program of research on social norms and communications practices could coordinate with national efforts to achieve common goals and objectives. SAMHSA’s Office of Communication’s future activities could also be informed and supported by partners and participating stakeholders.

Because change occurs slowly, outcome evaluations need to be multifaceted and sustained to capture both direct and indirect effects, as well as intended and unintended consequences. An evaluation plan should include and support community-based participatory research that is based on the principle of partnership, in which community partners act as co-learners with academic partners rather than helpers and recipients. This approach involves community stakeholders in helping to define both the change targets and the intervention strategies, as well as in the conduct of the research itself. To inform a national campaign, more in-depth formative and evaluative research is critically needed in three areas: communication strategies, contact-based programs, and the role of peers.

Communication Strategies

Communication science provides a basis for understanding the effects of message features, contents, and platforms on four outcomes: cognitive (e.g., attention and memory), affective (e.g., liking, empathy, and fear), persuasive (e.g., attitude and behavior change), and behavioral (e.g., intents and actions). These effects are not discrete. They depend on characteristics of the target audience or audiences, the media platform, the message source, and the specific content and production features used in the message. For example, in a campaign to counter the stereotype of dangerousness in the wake of a tragic event, relevant audiences would include the media, school officials and teachers, young people, parents, and clergy. Messages would target specific smaller groups and would be designed and delivered with input and support of engaged stakeholders, for example, in donated airtime or volunteered time of high-profile supporters and speakers.

CONCLUSION: Best practices in choosing effective messages first require that a communications campaign develop well-defined goals for each specific group targeted. Effective messages can then be tailored to the specific target audience for the defined goals.

Because of the complexity of designing communication messages, efforts to implement the committee’s recommendation on this topic should be informed by the results of formative and evaluative research. Research is necessary both before message concepts are generated and after message concepts are created for testing in the field. The perspectives of people with lived experience of mental and substance use disorders should inform anti-stigma campaigns at every stage, including design, delivery, and evaluation.

RECOMMENDATION 4: To design stigma-reduction messaging and communication programs, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should investigate and use evidence from formative and evaluative research on effective communication across multiple platforms.

Several general features of effective communication programs have been identified by research and can inform the work in the committee’s recommendations to SAMHSA:

Identify specific target groups and specific goals appropriate to each group (e.g., legislators and policy makers, employers and landlords, educators, health care practitioners, and people with mental and substance use disorders).
Make strong appeals that are relevant and personally consequential to particular audiences, for example, young people or veterans.
Understand how a particular audience orients to a message and what kinds of cues and styles hold their attention so that the message is absorbed and remembered.
Know what matters most to a specific target group.

Contact-Based Programs

Mixed-methods research has led to the identification of key elements of successful contact-based programs ( Corrigan et al., 2013 , 2014 ). Outcome research on contact demonstrates robust effects in pre-post studies ( Corrigan et al., 2012 ; Griffiths et al., 2014 ) and at follow-up ( Corrigan et al., 2015a ). Although the efficacy of contact-based programs is greater than that of education programs alone in adults across a range of specific target audiences, such as health professionals, college students, and police, evidence shows that one-time contact is not as effective as repeated contact. Education programs are effective in changing stigmatizing attitudes among adolescents.

CONCLUSION: To expand the reach of contact-based programs, efforts will be needed to develop a nationally representative cohort of individuals who have disclosed information about their experiences of mental or substance use disorders. Involvement of those individuals needs to be preceded by the design of programs to aid personal consideration and action on disclosure decisions and of peer training programs to help people consider the risks and benefits of disclosure.

RECOMMENDATION 5: To decrease public and self-stigma and promote affirming and inclusive attitudes and behaviors targeted to specific groups, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should work with federal partners to design, evaluate, and disseminate effective, evidence-based, contact-based programming.

The Role of Peers

Peers play an essential role in combatting stigma, in part because they model personal recovery. Their role is critical in helping individuals to overcome the debilitating forces of self-stigma. Peer support programs and services include social and emotional support, as well as practical support related to quality-of-life decisions, delivered by people with mental and substance use disorders. Peer support has existed since the 1970s, but in 2001 several states began efforts to certify and train the peer specialist workforce. By 2012, 36 states had established such programs, although there is considerable variation in the certification programs across these states ( Ostrow and Adams, 2012 ). State programs vary in terms of stage of development and certification requirements, including the content and process of training, examination criteria, and requirements for continuing education and recertification ( Kaufman et al., 2012 ).

Most research on the outcomes of peer services has focused on quality-of-life measures. Few data are available about the costs and benefits of these programs, although the research suggests that people who use peer support services are more likely to use other behavioral health services of all kinds, including professional services and prescription drugs, which may lead to improved outcomes ( Landers and Zhou, 2014 ). Although more peers are becoming certified, stakeholders disagree about the risks and benefits of professionalizing the role given grassroots origins of peer support in the consumer movement ( Ostrow and Adams, 2012 ).

CONCLUSION: In the United States, there is no established and accepted set of national or state competencies or standards for peer

specialists, such as those that apply to other health professionals at state levels.

Although stakeholders do not agree on the risks and benefits of certification for peer support providers, it may contribute to the quality and outcomes of peer services and facilitate research on the effectiveness of these services across a range of outcomes. Programs need to be appropriately targeted to the audience or audiences and implemented at the relevant geographic level. Components of this effort would include standardization of preparation for peer service providers and development of practice guidelines for referral to and delivery of peer services across agencies and organizations engaged in this work. SAMHSA has taken steps in this direction with its 2009 Consumer-Operated Service Evidence-Based Practices Toolkit ( Chapter 4 ) and continues to have an important role to play in the development and dissemination of these products and programs across the nation. The National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health offers a national certification for parent support providers that could serve as a model for future efforts to expand the reach of high-quality peer support services.

RECOMMENDATION 6: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration should work with partners to design, support, and assess the effectiveness of evidence-based peer programs to support people with mental and substance use disorders along the path to recovery and to encourage their participation in treatment.

Development of a national strategy for eliminating the stigma of mental and substance use disorders is a challenging, long-term goal that will require collaboration across federal agencies, support from governments at all levels, and engagement of a broad range of stakeholders. No single agency can implement an effective national strategy, but SAMHSA brings specific and unique strengths including well-established stakeholder relations, commitment to the recovery model, and a history of promotion and implementation of prevention and early intervention strategies. Early objectives will include consensus building across a range of issues, design of cost-sharing arrangements, and development and implementation of a research strategy, including a system for monitoring change public attitudes, and mechanisms for disseminating information to inform future anti-stigma interventions.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health.

However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders.

Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

Welcome to the United Nations

Rwanda's post-genocide lessons: we must speak out against discrimination and prejudice

Get monthly e-newsletter.

On 7 April, it will be 30 years since the start of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. To commemorate this anniversary, Amb. Ernest Rwamucyo , the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations in New York, shares insights with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor on lessons learned, Rwanda's remarkable economic growth and advancements in women's empowerment, among other topics. The following are excerpts from the interview:

The United Nations designated 7th April as the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Can you share with us the significance of this date?

The date is significant because it marked the beginning of a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. When the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi started, within 100 days over 1 million Tutsis were massacred.

It is now 30 years, but the memory is deep; the horrors that the victims and the survivors faced are still fresh. By remembering, we dignify those massacred and the survivors.

It is also important for the survivors to reflect on the tragedy that befell them and their families.

As Rwandans, it is a time when we call on our collective conscience to reflect on this tragedy and how we can rebuild our country.

Over the last decade, in remembering we have focused on the theme, Remember, Unite and Renew .

We focus on how we rebuild afresh so that genocide never happens again. In renewing, we look into the future with hope.

How do commemorative events here at the UN headquarters, back home in Rwanda and around the world, promote reconciliation?

First, over a million Tutsis were massacred. By remembering them, we give them the dignity and the humanity that their killers denied them.

We do that as a Rwandan society and as part of the international community. We share the lessons of that tragedy with the rest of the world in the hope that we can work to prevent future genocide.

We do it with members of the international community to reawaken the world to the real dangers of genocide.

Are the lessons from Rwanda on detecting the early stages of conflict reaching other countries?

We hope they do because the dangers are real. Any form of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, or bigotry can happen in any society, which is the beginning of genocide.

We cannot be bystanders when there is discrimination or antisemitism, or when there is prejudice or hatred.

How do you raise awareness internationally and among young people in particular?

It is through commemorative and remembrance events.

We also proactively engage our youth. For example, in collaboration with the UN, we host an event called Youth Connekt , where we bring young people from different parts of the world to Rwanda to witness the country’s rebuilding efforts and how we are empowering the youth to contribute to the process. The aim is to promote peace and tolerance and to demonstrate that after tragedy, rebuilding a nation is possible through hard work.

We emphasize that tolerance and peaceful co-existence is very important. We have also worked to empower our women to participate in rebuilding efforts.

How does Youth Connekt impact young people in Rwanda and other parts of Africa?

President Paul Kagame spearheads the initiative, and we partner with the UN. It started as a Rwandan initiative, but because of its potential to make young people creative and entrepreneurial, we have extended it to the rest of Africa and by extension the rest of the world.

Young people come together to share innovative ideas; they come up with projects they can implement, and we give them access to opportunities and resources.

They create technology-driven startups that uplift the welfare of societies. Some of these startups create significant jobs.

What challenges have you faced in the rebuilding process and how have you addressed them?

First, our society was traumatized by the genocide. So, we had to rebuild hope for our people.

Second, genocide denial is a significant danger as it not only seeks to evade accountability but is also a process of continuation of the genocide.

We have many genocide fugitives in different parts of the world, including in Europe and different parts of Africa, who have yet to face justice. We hope to work with the rest of the international community to hold them accountable so that the victims and survivors of the genocide can see justice served within their lifetime.

Third, we face the challenge of hate speech. Sometimes, people fail to recognize the dangers posed by hate speech and discrimination.

We are a developing country. We have worked to rebuild our country, including its infrastructure, but we still have a long way to go. A new Rwanda built out of the ashes of the 1994 genocide is a beacon of prosperity and hope for our people.

When you say genocide deniers, are there people who believe genocide did not happen?

There are people, especially perpetrators of genocide, who trivialize what happened or want to rewrite history. That is dangerous.

Are you getting the support of the international community as you try to bring perpetrators to justice?

For sure, we get the support of the international community. Internally, we established a tribunal to try genocide perpetrators.

We also had our restorative justice system, which is called Gacaca, aimed at using homegrown solutions to try perpetrators in a way that enables society to heal, while building a foundation of unity and reconciliation.

Many individuals are being tried in other jurisdictions. Still, more needs to be done because thousands more are evading accountability.

How is Rwanda achieving impressive economic growth despite the genocide?

After the tragedy, Rwanda took ownership of its development strategy. We realized that Rwandans killed Rwandans. Of course, there is a long history before that: colonialism, bad leadership and bad governance. We could not allow our society to remain in the abyss of despair after the tragedy.

Rwandans spearheaded the rebuilding of our nation based on unity, reconciliation, forgiveness, and the resilience that enabled us to pick up the pieces.

We rebuilt our infrastructure and provided social protections to uplift the welfare of citizens. Today, Rwanda’s growing economy is creating wealth and prosperity for its people.

We are building a new democratic society with functioning institutions.

How does Rwanda address the challenge of high youth unemployment, often leading to impatience with the government, especially in post-conflict situations?

We are creating opportunities for young people. The Rwandan economy has been growing above 8 per cent over the last decade or so. We ensure that economic growth leads to poverty reduction and creates jobs and opportunities for young people.

We have invested heavily in education, to ensure that our youth are skilled. We've also created a market economy that allows entrepreneurs to be innovative and creative.

Rwanda has the world’s highest percentage of female parliamentarians, along with significant women representation in the cabinet. How do these factors impact economic development?

Women's empowerment is at the forefront of Rwanda's post-genocide reconciliation and development. That our girls, mothers, and sisters feel included is something we are proud of.

As President Kagame often says, no nation can develop if 50 per cent of its population is not included in the development process. It's for that reason that Rwandan women have been empowered and given opportunities to play a role in rebuilding the country.

Women are well represented across our institutions—parliament, cabinet, local government, entrepreneurship, and other areas of decision-making in our society.

The quality of women’s contributions and their level of engagement have been excellent.

Rwanda is also a champion for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). If fully implemented, how do you think the AfCFTA can catalyze the African economy to benefit particularly young people and women?

Africa has not optimized its full potential due to fragmented markets. We have some 54 countries with significant barriers to cross-border.

The AfCFTA creates a market of over 1.3 billion people, with reduced barriers and free movement of people, goods and services.

This will foster the growth of the continent, making it competitive in global trade. So, AfCFTA’s implementation is vital. We are already beginning to see some of the benefits.

As we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the genocide against Tutsis, what final message do you have for Africans and the rest of the world?

One, don't be a bystander when you see any form of discrimination, bigotry, or prejudice. Because that could build into a genocide. You must speak out.

Second, you have to address the root causes of conflict that might grow into a tragedy. For example, hate speech.

Third, we have to build institutions that provide a voice for the people, accountability and justice.

Lastly, we must build free and fair societies.

The lessons of Rwanda should be taken very seriously. The tragedy that befell Rwanda could befall any country.

Also in this issue

Football saved me from genocide; now I promote peace with it

Kwibuka30: Learning from the past, safeguarding the future against genocide

REMEMBER.UNITE.RENEW.

Claver Irakoze: Bridging Generations Through the Memory of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda

We must confront the legacy of slavery, tackle systemic racism

Reflecting on the brutal Transatlantic Slave Trade

Share full article

Supported by

Race/Related

Harlem Was No Longer the Same After This Dinner Party

Harlem was synonymous with the arts. But what I didn’t know was how that had come to be.

By Veronica Chambers

A black-and-white photo from 1944 of a group of people in New York City laughing and holding drinks at a get-together. At least five are sitting on the floor.

This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here .

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, Harlem always seemed like a magical place. I learned about the Studio Museum in Harlem and artists like Alma Thomas and Romare Bearden. Langston Hughes’s poems were featured on posters in my local library, and everybody knew Duke Ellington because of his signature tune, “Take the A Train,” written by Billy Strayhorn. There were the Apollo Theater, where Ella Fitzgerald first sang, and dance troupes like the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem. Harlem was synonymous with the arts. But what I didn’t know was how that had come to be.

My senior thesis in college was on the dinner party that launched the Harlem Renaissance. It was amazing to me that a group of creative giants had prioritized art to serve as a case study in marrying talent to opportunity. The people I knew often said that art could make a difference, but the Harlem Renaissance showed me it was truly possible. In the early 1920s, Black Americans were excluded from many of the fields in which other Americans were building bases of power and generational wealth: from the unions to Wall Street and Congress. But as the historian David Levering Lewis noted, “no exclusionary rules had been laid down regarding a place in the arts. Here was a small crack in the wall of racism, a fissure that was worth trying to widen.”

So on March 21, 1924, two Black academics, Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson, invited more than 100 guests to the Civic Club in Manhattan with a grand plan to give young Black artists a shot at the kinds of opportunities they’d rarely had before: book deals with major publishing houses, their artwork on display in museums, their songs on radio and Broadway rotation. The party was, as we wrote about it recently in the Times , a major success. In the decade afterward, more than 40 major works by Black Americans were published. Levering Lewis wrote in When Harlem was in Vogue that no more than five Black American writers published significant books between 1908 and 1923.

What we know now, and what we’ll keep exploring in this series about the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance , is how that kind of creativity and hope can take on an astonishing velocity. From the inimitable voice of the writer Zora Neale Hurston and the painted murals of Aaron Douglas to the song stylings of Louis Armstrong, Harlem was forever changed after the Civic Club dinner. Wallace Thurman, a poet who lived in Harlem during the Renaissance, noted that the neighborhood had become “almost a Negro Greenwich Village. Every other person you meet is writing a novel, a poem or a drama.”

It’s not too hard to draw a line between the work that was begun then to the work that exists now: the poetry of Mahogany L. Browne and Kwame Alexander, the Black superheroes imagined by Eve L. Ewing and Malcolm Spellman, or the novels by Colson Whitehead, Edwidge Danticat and James McBride. The Harlem Renaissance reshaped the landscape of American culture, and for Black artists around the globe the aperture of what was possible widened.

Invite your friends. Invite someone to subscribe to the Race/Related newsletter. Or email your thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Veronica Chambers is the editor of Narrative Projects, a team dedicated to starting up multi-layered series and packages at The Times. More about Veronica Chambers

A New Light on the Harlem Renaissance

A century after it burst on the scene in new york city, the first african american modernist movement continues to have an impact in the american cultural imagination..

The Dinner Party: When Charles Johnson and Alain Locke thought that a celebration for Jessie Fauset’s book “There Is Confusion” could serve a larger purpose, the Harlem Renaissance was born .

A Period of Survival: During the Harlem Renaissance, some Black people hosted rent parties , celebrations with an undercurrent of desperation in the face of racism and discrimination.

An Ambitious Show: A new MoMA exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” aims to shift our view of the time when Harlem flourished as a creative capital. It gets it right, our critic writes .

An Enduring Legacy: We asked six artists to share their thoughts on the contributions that the Harlem Renaissance artists made to history

Crafting a New Life: At the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage fought racism to earn acclaim as a sculptor. The path she forged is also her legacy .

Read our research on: Gun Policy | International Conflict | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Younger americans stand out in their views of the israel-hamas war.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally at Columbia University in New York City on Nov. 15, 2023. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

Americans’ views about the Israel-Hamas war differ widely by age, as do their perceptions about discrimination against Jewish, Muslim and Arab people in the United States . Younger Americans, in particular, stand out on these issues.

Here’s a closer look at age differences in Americans’ opinions about the war, based on a Pew Research Center survey conducted in February among 12,693 U.S. adults.

Pew Research Center conducted this survey to explore age differences in views of the Israel-Hamas war. We surveyed a total of 12,693 U.S. adults from Feb. 13 to 25, 2024. Most of the respondents (10,642) are members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, an online survey panel recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses, which gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection.

The remaining 2,051 respondents are members of three other survey panels – Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, SSRS’s Opinion Panel, and NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak Panel – who were interviewed because they identify as Jewish or Muslim.

We “oversampled” (i.e., interviewed a disproportionately large number of) Jews and Muslims to provide more reliable estimates of their views on the topics covered in this survey. But these groups are not overrepresented in the national estimates reported here, because we adjusted for the oversampling in the weighting of the data. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. In total, 1,941 Jewish and 414 Muslim respondents participated in this survey.

While the sample design was identical for Jews and Muslims, the resulting sample sizes are different. There are two main reasons for this. The Jewish population in the United States is roughly double the size of the Muslim population . Consequently, national survey panels have roughly twice as many or more Jewish panelists as Muslim ones. In addition, decades of research on survey nonresponse has shown that some groups in the U.S. are more likely to participate in surveys than others. Generally speaking, Jewish adults are more likely to participate in surveys than Muslim adults.

Sample size limitations also prevent us from looking at age differences within the U.S. Muslim population, though we are able to look at age differences within the U.S. Jewish population.

The survey also included questions about where people were born and whether people identify as Arab or of Arab origin. Because of insufficient sample size, we are unable to analyze Arab Americans or Americans of Israeli or Palestinian descent separately.

In this survey, Jews and Muslims are defined as U.S. adults who answer a question about their current religion by saying they are Jewish or Muslim, respectively. Unlike our 2020 report on Jews in America , this report does not separately analyze the views of “Jews of no religion” (i.e., people who identify as Jewish culturally, ethnically or by family background but not by religion).

For more information on how we conducted this survey, refer to the ATP’s Methodology and the Methodology for this analysis. Here are the questions on views and knowledge of the Israel-Hamas war used in this analysis, and on perceptions of discrimination since the war began .

Younger Americans are more likely to sympathize with the Palestinian people than the Israeli people. A third of adults under 30 say their sympathies lie either entirely or mostly with the Palestinian people, while 14% say their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with the Israeli people. The rest say their sympathies lie equally with both, with neither or that they are not sure.

Older Americans, by comparison, are more likely to sympathize with Israelis than Palestinians. For example, among people ages 65 and older, 47% say their sympathies lie entirely or mostly with the Israeli people, while far fewer (9%) sympathize entirely or mostly with the Palestinians.

Among those under 30, however, there are wide partisan differences in views on this question and others. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents under 30 sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians (28% vs. 12%). Democrats and Democratic leaners sympathize far more with the Palestinians than the Israelis (47% vs. 7%).

A bar chart showing that younger adults sympathize more with Palestinians than older Americans do.

Younger Americans have a more favorable opinion of the Palestinian people than the Israeli people. Six-in-ten adults under age 30 have a positive view of the Palestinian people, compared with 46% who see the Israeli people positively.

A dot plot showing that Americans’ views of Israelis, Palestinians differ by age.

Older Americans, by contrast, are more likely to have a favorable opinion of the Israeli than Palestinian people.

Views of the Israeli people have soured among younger Americans in recent years. The share of adults under 30 with a favorable view of the Israeli people has fallen 17 percentage points since 2019, while views of the Palestinian people have not changed over this span. Older Americans’ views of both Israelis and Palestinians have remained largely unchanged.

Americans differ by age over why and how Israel is fighting Hamas. Adults under 30 are less likely than older Americans to say that Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid: 38% say this, compared with around half or more in each older age group.

A bar chart showing that younger Americans are more critical of both why and how Israel is fighting than older Americans.

Younger adults are also less likely than older people to see Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as acceptable – and more likely to see it as unacceptable. Some 46% of adults under 30 say the way Israel is carrying out its response is unacceptable, including 32% who call it completely unacceptable. Among older age groups, no more than around a third see Israel’s response as unacceptable.

Favorability of the Israeli government is also relatively low among the youngest U.S. adults. Around a quarter (24%) of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of the Israeli government, compared with half or more of those 50 and older.

There are notable age differences even among Jewish Americans: Younger Jews are more critical than older Jews of Israel’s approach to the war and have a less favorable view of Israel’s government.

Americans also differ by age over why and how Hamas is fighting Israel. Among younger Americans, 34% say Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel are valid, while 30% say they are not valid and 35% are unsure. Older Americans are less likely to see Hamas’ reasons for fighting as valid – and far more likely to see them as not valid. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans 65 and older, for example, say Hamas’ reasons are not valid.

When it comes to how Hamas carried out its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, a majority of younger Americans (58%) say it was unacceptable. But this view is more widespread among older Americans. For instance, 86% of people 65 and older say the way Hamas carried out its attack was unacceptable.

A bar chart showing that Americans under 30 are more likely than older people to say Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel are valid.

Few younger Americans think President Joe Biden is striking the right balance in the Israel-Hamas war. Only 12% of adults under 30 say this, while 36% say Biden is favoring the Israelis too much – up from 27% in December 2023 – and 10% say he is favoring the Palestinians too much.

Older Americans are somewhat more likely to say Biden is either striking the right balance or favoring the Palestinians too much.

A bar chart showing that younger adults are more likely to say Biden is favoring Israelis too much.

Younger Americans are generally less supportive of a U.S. role in the conflict – and especially opposed to military aid to Israel. Only 16% of adults under 30 favor the U.S. providing military aid to Israel to help in its war against Hamas, compared with 56% of those 65 and older.

A bar chart showing that younger Americans less likely to favor military aid to Israel; minimal age differences in views of aid to Gaza.

When it comes to humanitarian aid to Gaza, Americans under 30 are somewhat less likely than those 65 and older to favor it. (Much of this difference is because more younger Americans say they are unsure.)

Taken together, 46% of U.S. adults under 30 do not endorse either kind of aid asked about in our survey. This is more than twice the share among those 65 and older (21%).

In addition, adults under 30 are about twice as likely to say the U.S. should play no role in diplomatically resolving the Israel-Hamas war as they are to say the U.S. should play a major one (29% vs. 13%), though a third support a minor role. Older Americans, meanwhile, are more likely to support a major U.S. role.

Americans differ by age in their personal experiences related to the war. Adults under 30 are the most likely age group to say they have stopped talking to someone in person or unfollowed or blocked someone online because of something that person said about the Israel-Hamas war (16% say this).

A bar chart showing that younger Americans are more likely than older ones to have stopped talking to someone because of something they said about the Israel-Hamas war.

Younger adults are also particularly likely to have been offended by something someone said around them about the war (24% say this). More younger Democrats than younger Republicans report experiencing this (27% vs. 20%).

Older adults, for their part, are more likely to report having been offended by something they saw on the news or social media about the war. They are also much more likely to be closely following news about the war.

Younger Americans are less likely than older people to see increased discrimination against Jews since the start of the war, but they are more likely to see increased discrimination against Muslims and Arabs.

A bar chart showing that Americans under 30 are less likely than older adults to say discrimination against Jews has increased since the start of Israel-Hamas war.

About half (47%) of adults under 30 say discrimination against Jews in the U.S. has increased since the war began. By comparison, 73% of adults 65 and older say the same.

But while 47% of adults under 30 also say discrimination against Arabs in the U.S. has increased since the beginning of the war, this view is less common among those 65 and older (38%).

Attitudes about discrimination have also changed over time. Today, 31% of adults under 30 say Jews are facing a lot of discrimination in American society – up from 20% who said the same in 2021. Over this same period, though, the share of Americans 65 and older who say Jews face a lot of discrimination has more than doubled to 50%, up from 21%. This now-sizable age gap in views of discrimination against Jewish people was not present in 2021.

There are some age differences in Americans’ views of what kinds of speech should be allowed when it comes to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians . Across age groups, majorities say people in the U.S. should be allowed to express support for and opposition to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, as well as Palestinians having their own state. Majorities across age groups also say that calls for violence against Jews or Muslims should not be allowed.

A bar chart showing that Americans under 50 are slightly more likely to think calls for violence against Jews and Muslims should be allowed, though majority still oppose it.

While most adults under 50 do not think people in the U.S. should be allowed to express calls for violence against Jews or Muslims, they are still somewhat more likely than those 50 and older to think such violent expressions should be allowed.

And among those under 30, there are some significant differences by party. In particular, around one-in-five young Republicans think calls for violence against Jews and Muslims should be allowed, while only around one-in-ten young Democrats take that position.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings

U.S. veterans have mixed views of Afghanistan withdrawal but are highly critical of how Biden handled it

Two decades later, the enduring legacy of 9/11, majority of u.s. public favors afghanistan troop withdrawal; biden criticized for his handling of situation, after 17 years of war in afghanistan, more say u.s. has failed than succeeded in achieving its goals, the iraq war continues to divide the u.s. public, 15 years after it began, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Iowa gender balance law's repeal ends unconstitutional discrimination in public service

Jurisdictions across the state were forced to choose based on gender, even where someone more qualified for the role was available..

Jeffrey Jennings is an attorney and Kileen Lindgren is legal policy manager at Pacific Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm.

Wednesday's repeal of Iowa’s gender quota laws is a significant win for equality under the law. Since the 1980s, Iowa’s state government has discriminated against both male and female Iowans aspiring to serve on public boards.

State law required that boards, commissions, and councils (even local government) be “balanced” with an equal number of men and women, which means there is a 50/50 gender quota across Iowa government. By signing Senate File 2096 into law, Gov. Kim Reynolds has brought this un-American legacy to an end.

This repeal is long overdue, and harm has been done for decades. Last year, Iowa’s Boards and Commissions Review Committee reported that the gender-balance requirement results in “nearly half of Iowa’s population” being “systematically excluded” from consideration for appointment. The Review Committee also noted that excluding applicants based on their gender "is not based on merit.” That means jurisdictions across the state were forced to choose based on gender, even where someone more qualified for the role was available. And, the laws have made it difficult for governments to fill the seats on commissions and councils.

To make matters worse, gender quotas are blatantly unconstitutional. Just this January, a federal court struck down the Iowa law that required gender balancing on the state’s Judicial Nominating Commission — recognizing that gender quotas and gender balancing violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

Iowans have Charles Hurley to thank for that court victory. Charles is a devoted father and grandfather who spent the past 40 years as an attorney, public representative, and active church member. As a state representative, Charles served on Iowa’s House Judiciary Committee. His experience made him an excellent candidate for the State Judicial Nominating Commission.

Unfortunately for Charles, Iowa law excluded him from appearing on the ballot in his district solely because of his gender. But Charles fought back with the help of our firm, Pacific Legal Foundation.

In its attempt to justify the gender quota, the state argued that it was “appropriately enacted to address the absolute absence of women” on the commission. The court rejected that rationale. It said that the alleged lack of women on the Commission in the 1980s (when the law was first passed) cannot justify discrimination against men and women today.

Thanks to Senate File 2096 sponsor Sen. Jason Schultz, the Iowa Legislature acted promptly to eliminate gender discrimination statewide for those who wish to serve on public boards and commissions.

While Iowa has done the right thing, our work at Pacific Legal Foundation is not done. As our report explains, several other states employ sex-based requirements for service on various public boards and commissions. We won’t stop fighting until all states are discrimination free. Iowa has shown it can be done, and we hope that those states will soon follow Iowa’s leadership in repealing their sex-based requirements for public service.

Jeffrey Jennings is an attorney and Kileen Lindgren is legal policy manager at Pacific Legal Foundation , a public interest law firm that defends Americans' liberty against government overreach and abuse free of charge.

IMAGES

Discrimination
Reflection Essay: Discrimination essay
FIN1100
Discrimination Essay
Essay on Gender Discrimination
Gender Discrimination: Women Perspective (PDF Download Available)

VIDEO

Book Trailer: UTSA Victim (Part 2)
2019 UBCO 3MT People's Choice Megan Udala
Lesley Ellis Joint 3rd place 3MT University of Leeds 2014
Parinda (the Bird)
What does language discrimination look like?
Breaking Silence: Pervasiveness of Oppression at UIUC Documentary (Part I)

COMMENTS

PDF DISCRIMINATION IN AMERICA: FINAL SUMMARY
discrimination because of their race, gender, or LGBTQ identity. People were asked whether they believe they have ever personally experienced various forms of both institutional and individual discrimination. In this series, the term "institutional discrimination" refers to forms of discrimination based on laws, policies, institutions, and the
PDF The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment
which discrimination is reported does not decline among those higher in the social hier-archy; in fact, middle-class blacks are as likely to perceive discrimination as are working-class blacks, if not more (Feagin & Sikes 1994, Kessler et al. 1990). Patterns of perceived discrimination are important ﬁndings in their
Culture, Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
Summary. Prejudice is a broad social phenomenon and area of research, complicated by the fact that intolerance exists in internal cognitions but is manifest in symbol usage (verbal, nonverbal, mediated), law and policy, and social and organizational practice. It is based on group identification (i.e., perceiving and treating a person or people ...
Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, and the Impact of Workplace Power
Abstract. Research on workplace discrimination has tended to focus on a singular axis of inequality or a discrete type of closure, with much less attention to how positional and relational power within the employment context can bolster or mitigate vulnerability. In this article, the author draws on nearly 6,000 full-time workers from five ...
(PDF) Racism, racial discrimination, and trauma: a ...
A systematic review of the social science literature on how racial discrimination and trauma affect health and well-being. Read and cite the full PDF on ResearchGate.
Dying for a Diagnosis: The Impact of Racial Discrimination in Healthcare
This Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Dominican Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Theses by an authorized ... Discrimination is the act of behaving negatively towards an individual or group due to the social group they belong to (Dictionary.com, 2012). As it pertains to ...
Full article: Resisting racism in everyday life: from ignoring to
Racism and racial discrimination. The idea of races maintained through notions of different phenotypes, ethnicities and cultures, produces a variety of forms of racism (Lentin Citation 2008).Broadly speaking, racism involves assigning people negative characteristics based on their "real or imaginary" difference, thus depicting them as subordinate and using that subordination to legitimate ...
The Sociology of Discrimination: Racial Discrimination in Employment
Discrimination is not the only cause of racial disparities in the United States. Indeed, persistent inequality between racial and ethnic groups is the product of complex and multifaceted influences. Nevertheless, the weight of existing evidence suggests that discrimination does continue to affect the allocation of contemporary opportunities ...
Racism, bias, and discrimination
Racism, bias, and discrimination. Racism is a form of prejudice that generally includes negative emotional reactions to members of a group, acceptance of negative stereotypes, and racial discrimination against individuals; in some cases it can lead to violence. Discrimination refers to the differential treatment of different age, gender, racial ...
Introduction: The Case for Discrimination Research
Abstract. Increasing migration-related diversity in Europe has fostered dramatic changes since the 1950s, among them the rise of striking ethno-racial inequalities in employment, housing, health, and a range of other social domains. These ethno-racial disadvantages can be understood as evidence of widespread discrimination; however, scholarly ...
PDF THE EFFECT OF DISCRIMINATION ON JOB PERFORMANCE AND JOB ...
sex is phenomenon that is biologically determined, and would describe the physical parts on an. individual, such as composition, body structure, facial hair and genitalia (Bryson, 1999, p.38). Therefore, males and females are separated by their biological characteristics known as sex. Sex.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care: an Ethical Analysis of
Our second thesis, the anti-discrimination thesis, is that disparities in receipt of health care or adverse health outcomes among racial, ethnic or other disadvantaged patient groups should trigger heightened moral scrutiny. The theses are presented as lenses through which the morally salient features of health services can be viewed.
PDF Coping With Racial Discrimination: a New Way for Social Media to Be of
Unlike other forms of discrimination, racial discrimination has a unique adverse effect on physical health for African Americans (Mouzon 2017). When compared to other forms of discrimination, racial discrimination hurts specifically African Americans more than non-racial discrimination and overall discrimination (Mouzon 2017).
Justice and unintentional discrimination in health care: A qualitative
Discrimination in health care manifests itself in various forms such as discrimination based on sex, race, age, type ... This study was extracted from a Ph.D. thesis in nursing approved on May 29, 2019, in Tehran University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The researchers would like to sincerely thank all participants in this ...
Essays About Discrimination: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts
At the end of her essay, Ibarra points out how society is dogmatic against the lower class, thinking they are abusers. In Luca, the wealthy antagonist is shown to be violent and lazy. 5. The New Way of Discrimination by Writer Bill. "Even though the problem of discrimination has calmed down, it still happens….
Discrimination in the Public Sector and its Issues
Masters Thesis Discrimination in the Public Sector and its Issues. Discrimination in the public sector is a matter of critical importance in terms of relationships between the public sector and civil society. Failing to address discrimination against public sector employees imperils values of equity, fairness, justice and transparency. ...
Essays and Commentary on Race and Racism
The public outpouring over racism that has been taking place in America since George Floyd's murder feels like a long-postponed renewal of the reckoning that shook the nation more than half a ...
6 Conclusions and Recommendations
6 Conclusions and Recommendations LESSONS LEARNED Experiences of Other Countries. The experiences of Australia, Canada, and England (see Chapter 4) strongly indicate that changing negative social norms that stigmatize people with mental and substance use disorders will require a coordinated and sustained effort.Behavioral health-related norms and beliefs are created and reinforced at multiple ...
(PDF) The Literature Review of Gender Discriminations in Schools
The study aims to outline gender discrimination issues in Georgia and its impact on people's personal lives and health. A total of 759 respondents employed at a higher educational institution were ...
Discrimination: What it is and how to cope
Discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age, or sexual orientation. That's the simple answer. But explaining why it happens is more complicated. The human brain naturally puts things in categories to make sense of the world.
Writing a Thesis Statement about Discrimination
on Writing a Thesis Statement about Discrimination. What is a good example of a thesis statement? A good example of a thesis statement is "The current educational system is flawed and in need of reform to better serve students' needs." This statement clearly outlines the issue and the proposed solution in a concise and direct manner.
Rwanda's post-genocide lessons: we must speak out against
Any form of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, or bigotry can happen in any society, which is the beginning of genocide. We cannot be bystanders when there is discrimination or antisemitism, or ...
What is a good thesis statement on discrimination?
A thesis statement is simply a sentence that describes the main topic that will be presented and discussed in a research paper. In some cases, it may require two sentences to introduce the topic and then explain the focus of your paper. Applied to the topic of discrimination, the first thing you should do is gain a thorough understanding of ...
PDF THE ANALYSIS OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION PORTRAYED IN GREEN BOOK THESIS By
of people. Racial discrimination often followed by the acts of violence done by a group of people to other group that supposed to be different race. One of the most common racial discrimination practices are conflict between White and Black people. Black people often get racial discrimination in the form of violence or bad stereotype.
LGBT adults more likely to experience discrimination in the ...
Zoom in: LGBT adults were much more likely to report having a bad experience with a provider that caused their health to get worse (24% vs. 9%), made them less likely to seek out care (39% vs. 15%) or led them to switch providers (36% vs. 16%). Experiences of discrimination, in or outside of the health care system, could exacerbate mental ...
More Americans say there's anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim discrimination now
Perceptions of discrimination against Jews and Muslims in the U.S. are rising, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.. Forty percent of Americans now say there is anti-Jewish bias in the U ...
Jane Elliott, anti-racism teacher, slams efforts to limit how race is
Jane Elliott will never forget her sister's April 4, 1968, phone call telling her the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. Elliott, like many people across the US, was shocked ...
Harlem Was No Longer the Same After This Dinner Party
The party was, as we wrote about it recently in the Times, a major success. In the decade afterward, more than 40 major works by Black Americans were published. Levering Lewis wrote in When Harlem ...
In views of Israel-Hamas war, younger Americans stand out
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally at Columbia University in New York City on Nov. 15, 2023. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images) Americans' views about the Israel-Hamas war differ widely by age, as do their perceptions about discrimination against Jewish, Muslim and Arab people in the United States.Younger Americans, in particular, stand out on these issues.
Iowa gender balance law's repeal ends unconstitutional discrimination
State law required that boards, commissions, and councils (even local government) be "balanced" with an equal number of men and women, which means there is a 50/50 gender quota across Iowa ...

Article contents

Introduction

Culture and Intolerance

The Role of Culture in Prejudice

“Culture”-Based Prejudices: Ethnocentrism, Xenophobia

Ethnocentrism

Limited Perspectives of Prejudice

The nature of prejudice

Causes of prejudice

Racism: A Case Study in Prejudice

Who Can Be Racist? The Locus of Racism (and Other Intolerances)

The locus of racism: Individual or structural?

Racism: Defined by intent or result?

Intersectionalities of Racism

Queer theory

Whiteness studies

Orientalism/postcolonialism

Discrimination: Considering the Form(s) of Intolerance

Institutional Discrimination

Genocide and ethnic cleansing

Redlining and racial profiling

Intolerant Communication

Prejudiced colloquialisms

Prejudice built into language

Intolerance gone underground: Subtle forms of prejudice

Intolerance in the media and on the internet

The potential of communication

Conclusions

Further Reading

Related Articles

Introduction: The Case for Discrimination Research

1.1 Post-War Immigration and the Ethno-racial Diversity Turn

1.2 Talking About Discrimination in Europe

1.3 Who Is Discriminated Against? The Problem with Statistics on Ethnicity and Race

1.4 Discrimination and Integration: Commonalities and Contradictions

1.5 The Content of the Book

Author information

Rights and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Download citation

Share this chapter

Justice and unintentional discrimination in health care: A qualitative content analysis

Masoud Fallahi-Khoshknab

BACKGROUND:

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

CONCLUSION:

Introduction

Materials and Methods

Participants

Data collection

Data analysis

Ethical considerations

Category 1 Forced discrimination

Superiors' pressures and executive orders

Occupational concerns

Fear of the superiors

Category 2 Guided discrimination

Professional challenges

Managers' policymaking

Lack of medical ethics knowledge

Category 3 Lack of resources

Workforce shortage

Lack of medical equipment

Financial support and sponsorship

Acknowledgments

Essays About Discrimination: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

1. Essay On Discrimination For Students In Easy Words by Prateek

Prompts on Essays About Discrimination

Downloadable Content

Discrimination in the Public Sector and its Issues

Essays and Commentary

My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children

She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees—confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died.

June 21, 2020

The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone.

June 8, 2020

For my daughters, the pandemic was a relief from race-related stress at school. Then George Floyd was killed.

June 25, 2020

A group of athletes across various American professional sports have communicated the fear, frustration, and anger of most of Black America.