education

All Humans Have Prejudice and Discriminate Just as all people have prejudices, learned from socialization, all people discriminate. So, the blind woman in our previous example may also have prejudices against us because we are sighted. Based on her previous experiences with sighted people, she may assume that we are ignorant about people with disabilities […]

What is Discrimination? The term discrimination has multiple meanings, including having discriminating (or refined) taste in music or food. In critical social justice studies, we use it to refer to action based on prejudices toward social others. How we think about groups of people determines how we act toward them; Discrimination occurs when we act

What is Prejudice? This vignette illustrates some of the many complicated dimensions associated with critical social justice. While most people want to be fair, we can’t help but have preconceived notions—prejudices—about other people based on their social groups (in this case, the candidate’s gender). At the same time, we often feel deeply hurt and insulted

Prejudice and Discrimination “I was taught never to judge a book by its cover.” This chapter explains two key interrelated terms: prejudice and discrimination. We explain that prejudice and discrimination cannot be avoided; we all hold prejudices and we all discriminate based on our prejudices. We argue that the first step in minimizing discrimination is

Patterns to Practice Seeing 1. Practice identifying patterns at the group (rather than individual) level. For example, in workplace meetings or other public spaces, practice seeing which groups are included and which are not. 86 2. Practice naming people by their key social groups. For example, “Tina, a white able-bodied cis-woman, went to the store.”

Extension Activities 1. “Act like a boy or girl.” This is a popular diversity exercise intended to draw out the forces of gender socialization. Divide the group into men and women (if someone doesn’t identify with either category, ask the person to choose a group depending on either how mainstream society would categorize him or

According to the authors, why do so many people feel immune to the forces of socialization? Discussion Questions 1. Key careers tend to be organized in ways that are gendered (police and firefighters tend to be men, while teachers and nurses tend to be women). How would the authors explain this pattern? 84 2. According

Group Identities As this example shows, race and ethnicity interact in complex ways with language and citizenship. For those new to the study of critical social justice, mastering these complexities is of secondary importance. Of primary importance is the ability to understand these categories as socially constructed and reflective of a particular political and cultural

Frame of Reference Glasses Diagram In order to develop critical social justice literacy, we must be able to see how our ideas, views, and opinions are not objective and independent, but rather the result of myriad social messages and conditioning forces. The first layer of socialization we might easily identify is our family. While our

While many of us believe that we treat everyone the same, this is not possible STOP: While many of us believe that we treat everyone the same, this is not possible. Countless studies show that humans are not and cannot be objective (independent from our socialization) about one another. This socialization drives us to discriminate.