Racism differs from prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of word counter
What makes prejudice different from racism?
How sociology helps explain the differences between the two.
A Pew Research Center study found that almost 40% of white Americans think the United States has made the changes needed to give white and Black people the same rights.
1 But only 8% of Black Americans said that they think this is true. This shows that it's important to talk about the difference between prejudice and racism, since some people don't know that the two are different and that racism is still a big problem.
Learning About Discrimination
The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that prejudice is an unfavorable opinion or leaning that is formed without good reasons or before having enough information. Sociologists agree with this definition. Simply put, it's when someone makes an assumption about another person that isn't based on their own life. For example, the "dumb blonde" stereotype and jokes that use it can be seen as a form of prejudice from a sociological point of view.
Most of the time, we think of prejudice as a negative attitude toward another group, but prejudices can also be good (i.e. when people hold positive stereotypes about members of other groups). Some forms of prejudice are based on race and have racist effects, but not all do. This is why it's important to know the difference between prejudice and racism.
An Example
Jack said that this kind of prejudice against blond people had caused him pain in his life as a blond person with German roots. But are the bad effects of prejudice on Jack the same as on other people who are called racial slurs? Not really, and sociology can explain why.
Even though calling someone a "dumb blonde" might make them feel frustrated, annoyed, uncomfortable, or even angry, it's rare for the insult to have any other negative effects. There is no evidence that a person's hair color affects their access to rights and resources in society, like getting into college, being able to buy a house in a certain neighborhood, getting a job, or being stopped by the police. This kind of bias, which usually comes out in bad jokes, may have some bad effects on the joke itself, but they probably won't be as bad as the effects of racism.
Understanding Racism
Howard Winant and Michael Omi, two experts on race, say that racism is a way of describing or talking about race that "creates or reproduces structures of dominance based on essentialist categories of race." In other words, racism causes people of different races to have different amounts of power. Because of this, using the "n-word" doesn't just show bias. Instead, it shows and reinforces an unfair hierarchy of racial groups that hurts the chances of people of color in life.
Using offensive words like the racial slur mentioned above, which was made popular by white Americans during the time when Africans were enslaved, shows a wide range of disturbing racial biases. It is a very different thing to say that people with blond hair are dumb than to use this term, which has a lot of harmful and far-reaching meanings and reinforces prejudices. The "n-word" has been used in the past and is still used today to keep racial inequality in place. Sociologists say that this makes the use of this word racist, not just prejudiced.
Systemic racism has a lot of bad effects.
Even if racist thoughts and actions are unconscious or only half-conscious, they contribute to the structural inequalities between races that hurt society. The racial biases in racial slurs show up in many ways: the disproportionate number of police stops, arrests, and jail sentences for Black men and boys (and more and more Black women); racial discrimination in hiring practices; the lack of media and police attention given to crimes against Black people compared to crimes against white women and girls; and the lack of economic investment in predominantly Black neighborhoods and cities.
Even though many kinds of prejudice are bad, not all of them have the same effects. Those that lead to structural inequalities, like prejudices based on gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and religion, are very different from others.