In 2016, while many us do not feel personally
racist, prejudiced or bigoted we are still encountering a great amount of
discrimination in our nation. Whereas prejudice refers to attitudes,
discrimination refers to actions or practices that result in differential
treatment of categories of individuals.
Individual versus Institutional Discrimination (Mooney,
Linda, Knox, David, and Schacht)
Individual discrimination occurs when individuals
treat other individuals unfairly or unequally because of their group
membership. Individual discrimination can be overt or adaptive. In overt
discrimination, individuals discriminate because of their own prejudicial
attitudes. For example, a white landlord may refuse to rent to a Mexican
American family because of prejudice against Mexican Americans.
In adaptive discrimination, the injustice occurs
due to the discrimination of others. The landlord may refuse the Mexican
American family due to the discrimination of other tenants and for fear that
they would move.
Institutional discrimination refers to
institutional policies and procedures that result in unequal treatment of and
opportunities for minorities. Institution discrimination is covert and
insidious and maintains the subordinate position of minorities in society. For
example, when schools use standard intelligence tests to decide which children
will be placed in college preparatory tracks, they are limiting the educational
advancement of minorities whose intelligence is not fairly measured by
culturally biased tests developed from white middle-class experiences. And the
funding of public schools through local tax dollars results in less funding for
schools in poor and largely minority school districts.
Employment Discrimination
Despite laws against it, discrimination against
minorities occurs today in all phases of the employment process, from
recruitment to interview, job offer, salary, promotion, and firing decisions. A
sociologist at Northwestern University studied employers' treatment of job
applicants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by dividing up job applicant
"testers" into four groups: blacks with a criminal record, blacks
without a criminal record, whites with a criminal record, and whites without a
criminal record (Pager 2003). Applicant testers, none of whom actually had a
criminal record, were trained to behave similarly in the application process
and were sent with comparable resumes to the same set of employers. The study
found that white applicants with no criminal record were the most likely to be
called back for an interview (34 percent) and that black applicants with a
criminal record were the least likely to be called back (5 percent). But
surprisingly, white applicants with a criminal record (17 percent) were more
likely to be called back for a job interview than were black applicants without
a criminal record (14 percent). The researcher concluded that "the
powerful effects of race thus continue to direct employment decisions in ways
that contribute to persisting racial inequality" (Pager 2003, p. 960).
Workplace discrimination also includes unfair
treatment and harassment. African American employees working for A.C.
Widenhouse---a North Carolina---based freight trucking company---were
repeatedly subjected to derogatory racial comments and slurs by employees and
managers. These insulting comments and slurs included "n----r,"
"monkey," and "boy" (EEOC 2011). One employee was
approached by a coworker with a noose who said, "This is for you. Do you
want to hang from the family tree?" A company manager allegedly told an
employee, "We are going coon hunting, are you going to be the coon?"
Sources
EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). 2011 (June
22). “A.C. Widenhouse Sued by EEOC for Racial Harassment.” Press Release.
Available at www.eeoc.gov
Mooney, Linda, Knox, David, and Schacht, Caroline
2015. Understanding Social Problems. Cengage Learning: Boston, MA.
Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.”
American Journal of Sociology
108(5):937-975
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