Prejudice and discrimination against people due to race, social class, or gender are habits as old as time. It comes in many forms, negative and positive and may sometimes remain unnoticeable. The halo effect causes people to attribute positive aspects to a person or institution based on their outlook. For instance, people tend to believe Apple products are superior to android products despite never having ascertained it because of the company’s outlook. Due to this attitude, one would be inclined to buy an Apple product, despite the cost and other cons, than they would an Android product. The halo effect is also the reason people tend to treat attractive people with more respect as opposed to less attractive people. There have been countless cases where jurors rule in the favor of an attractive or naïve defendant due to the premonition that beauty automatically interprets to goodness and naivety to innocence. This premonition is often subconscious and begins as early as childhood; a study conducted with children from the ages of one to three showed that they are more receptive of attractive people that they are of their less attractive counterparts.
To reduce prejudice, four criteria have been proven to work: equal status, common goals, working cooperatively, and institutional support. Equal status gives different groups of people, like men and women or colored and non-colored people, identical privileges (Chapter 9, 2021). Such privileges include equal rights to vote and hold political offices, and similar opportunities to attaining education and well-paying jobs. Common goals include having similar aims to help build a mutual ground. Working cooperatively also helps create mutual grounds as it gets people from diverse groups working on the same project. Institutional support includes backing from various establishments to help reduce stereotypes and unfair conditions.
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The most important criteria are equal status and working cooperatively. These two have been the main factors behind the diversification of the United States and the integration of African Americans into society (Lynch, 2017). Since no one is born racist, children pick up racist thoughts when they see African Americans having substandard opportunities in institutions like schools, churches, and even hospitals. By eliminating the unfair statuses between the two groups with the backing of institutions, the racist story has slowly been changed as children grow up seeing people of different genders as equal human beings. However, institutional support rests heavily on the willingness of a society to accept the existence of racism before even trying to alleviate the effects. Although many states and schools reject the introduction of the critical race theory in the curriculum, teaching children that the distinction between races is an abstract societal concept goes a long way in reducing racism. Once children are fully informed what racism entails, they will be conscious of their discriminatory actions as they grow up, and hence become responsible adults.
A prejudice reduction program based on equal status and institutional support would be a re-education intervention. The current curriculum in several states does not include Native Americans as a people on their own and thus encourages prejudice against them (Lynch, 2017). The program would target young school children and teach them the existence of Native Americans, their culture, and religion, and the process integrating their culture into mainstream society. Since the settling of the founding fathers in the current Americas, it has been a popular belief that the European civilized way is superior to the Native Americans culture. A good example of this discriminatory view at play is the residential school system in Canada that greatly eroded the Indigenous peoples’ identity. This program intends to provide equal status to Native Americans by teaching students the value of their culture.
References
Lynch, J. (2017). Prejudice Reduction and the Schools . Nichols Publishing Co., PO Box 96,
New York, NY 10024..
Chapter 9. (2021). “Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination.”
