Understanding Racism and Prejudice

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Understanding Racism and Prejudice

• Diller Moule, Chapter 3

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Introduction

• Diller Moule (2005) argue that the majority of
  White Americans believe that this country is
  European in ancestry and White in Identity and
  that people of color are disturbed by their
  second class citizenry.

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Defining and Contextualizing Racism

• Racism is
• Universal
• Exists across cultures
• Emerges when there are perceivable differences
  among groups struggling for social power (look at
  the conflict in Kenya between Kikuyu and Luo)

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Defining and Contextualizing Racism

• Prejudice is a negative, inaccurate, rigid, and
  unfair way of thinking about members of another
  group (Diller Moule, 2005, p. 29)
• Racism prejudice power that translates into
  behavior of the majority that impacts the object
  of the prejudice.

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Defining and Contextualizing Racism

• Racism is broad and pervasive in all levels of
  society and has three levels
• Individual Racism actions of individuals that
  support racism
• Institutional Racism manipulation of societal
  institutions to benefit the majority and restrict
  the choices, rights, mobility, and access of
  others.
• Cultural racism cultural ways of one group are
  superior to another

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Defining and Contextualizing Racism

• people tend to deny, rationalize, and avoid
  discussing their feelings and beliefs about race
  and ethnicity. It is hard to look at and talk
  about race because there is so much pain and hurt
  involved (Diller Moule, 2005. p. 60).
• Please read the example on pp. 31-32 in Diller
  Moule (2005).

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Individual Racism and Prejudice

• Why is it so easy to develop and maintain racial
  prejudices?
• It grows out of normal human traits, comfort with
  similarity, suspicion, categorical thinking, over
  simplification.
• In and out group
• Stereotype of categorical thinking
• Re-fensing deals with contradictions to the
  stereotype

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Psychological Theories of Prejudice

• In reality, there does not seem to be single
  theory that can adequately explain the impetus
  toward racism in all individuals (Diller
  Moule, 2005, p. 35).
• Frustration-aggression-displacement
• Authoritarian Personality
• Manipulation to achieve certain economic and
  political objectives (Look at the change in the
  political positions of George Wallace)

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Implications for Teachers

• Dealing with racism in a healthy and
  non-self-destructive manner is, therefore, a
  major life challenge for many students. To be the
  continual object of a persons hatred, as well
  as, the hatred of an entire social system is a
  source of enormous stress, and such stress often
  produces educational problems. (Diller Moule,
  2005, p. 36)

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Implications

• See the Murder of Emmett Till at
• http//www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/

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Implications for Teachers

• Awareness of your own prejudices, previous
  knowledge, and how they might impact your
  perceptions, judgments, and behavior. (what is
  this picture)

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Implications for Teachers

• The preceding picture was the Rift Valley

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Institutional Racism

• Conscious or unconscious the individuals
  working in the system may or may not be aware of
  the practices existence and the impact.
• Intended or unintended the practices may or may
  not have been purposely created.
• Lack of intent or awareness should never be
  regarded as a justification for the existence of
  institutional or individual racism (Diller
  Moule, 2005, p. 39)

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Implications for teachers

• To the extent that the general structure,
  practices, and climate of a school make it
  impossible for Students of Color to receive
  culturally competent teaching, the efforts of
  individual teachers, no matter how skilled, are
  drastically compromised. (Diller Module, 2005,
  p. 42)

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Cultural Racism

• Schools, like ethnic groups, have their own
  cultures languages, ways of doing things,
  values, attitudes toward time, standards of
  appropriate behavior and so on. As participants
  in schools, students are expected to adopt,
  share, and exhibit these cultural patterns.
  (Diller Module, 2005, p. 43)

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Cultural Racism

• Herein lies the real insidiousness of cultural
  racism those who are culturally different must
  either give up their own ways, and thus a part of
  themselves, and take on the ways of the majority
  culture or remain perpetual outsiders. (Diller
  Module, 2005, p. 43)

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Implications for Teachers

• Be aware of the cultural values they bring to the
  classroom and acknowledge how different these
  values may be from those of some their students
  and their parents.
• Teaching across cultures must involve negotiation
  around values that define the learning
  environment.
• Teacher preparation is culture bound cultures
  differ in terms of definition of success and the
  teachers role.

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Summary

• U.S is European in ancestry and White in identity
  in culture.
• Racism prejudice power to create behavior
  that leads to the systematic subordination of
  members of targeted racial groups who have little
  social power by members of the agent racial
  group who have relatively more social power.

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Summary

• Racism involves
• Individual
• Institutional
• Cultural

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Summary

• Implications for teachers
• Understand how the stress of racism creates
  challenges for students of color
• Understand how your culture and values impact
  what you perceive, think, and do
• Understand how your organizational culture
  impacts the interactions among you, your
  students, and their community
• Understand what elements of culture need to be
  negotiated to create an effective learning
  environment in each class.

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Reflection Exercise

• When did you first become aware that people were
  different racially or ethnically?
• When did you first become aware of yourself as a
  member of a racial or ethnic group?
• When were you first made aware of people being
  treated differently because of their race or
  ethnicity?

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Reflection Exercise

• When did you first become aware of being treated
  differently yourself because of your own race or
  ethnicity?
• Are the things about you as a person that make
  you feel that you are different from other
  people? Describe them and describe how having
  these qualities makes you feel and has affected
  you over time?

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Reflection Exercise

• When were you proudest being a member of the
  group to which you belong?
• When were you least proud of being a member of
  the group to which you belong?
• How do you identify yourself racially/ethnically?
  Culturally? How has your sense of race/ethnicity
  or culture changed over time?

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Reflection Exercise

• How would you describe the extent of your contact
  with people who are racially/ethnically different
  from you? How has this changed over time?

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Reference

• Diller, J. V. Module, J. (2005). Cultural
  Competence A Primer for Educators. Belmont, CA.
  Thomson Wadsworth.