Stereotyping & Prejudice Response Paper

READ:

Please type (double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 pt font or equivalent) responses to the two discussion prompts below. I anticipate your responses will take approximately 6 pages. Please provide independent responses for each prompt.  (That is, you cannot make references to what you said in #1 when answering #2.)

Note that in this paper, unlike the others, I'm giving you prompts rather than asking you to answer specific questions. Thus, your responses will require more organization and thoughtful analysis. Each of the two discussion prompts should be treated, essentially, like a brief paper. 

Remember that I will be looking for explicit references to the concepts and studies you read about in your text and in the articles.  Your responses should be firmly grounded in (based on) social psychological research. Give details of studies where you think those details might be useful to aid in understanding or illustrating a concept. (I anticipate that you will provide detail for at least one of the studies you mention.) Feel free to bring in concepts we learned earlier in the course, but note that I expect you to make substantial use of this unit's readings.  

Cite your sources properly. In addition to any paragraph breaks you put within your answers, you should consider each new question a new paragraph and cite sources accordingly. Include a references page.

1. Comparing America today to the America of the 1960's, there appears to be a great deal of equality and very little explicitly expressed prejudice.  Many Americans believe that discriminatory hiring or college admissions practices are a thing of the past; that there is equal opportunity for everyone. This belief is frequently a product of a person's belief that he or she (and all of his or her friends) are clearly not prejudiced. One of the consequences of these beliefs is that those in power fail to see the personal relevance of social inequality.  

Integrating the information you learned from your readings about contemporary prejudice, provide a clear and well-organized social psychological analysis that addresses these beliefs.  

2. Many members of "privileged" groups argue that members of underrepresented groups (e.g., Blacks, Latinos, gays) are just over-reacting when they claim that they see prejudice every day, often in their interpersonal interactions. In many of the reaction papers about campus presenters that I have read through the years, students have suggested that the presenter is being "overly sensitive" about issues of prejudice and/or that the presenter is deliberately looking for ambiguous situations which can be interpreted as prejudice.

Integrating the information you learned from your readings about the treatment of and perspectives of members of stigmatized groups, provide a clear and well-organized social psychological analysis that addresses these beliefs.

Note: this question is asking primarily about the experiences of stigmatized individuals (but you do not have to limit your response to such research).