General Discussion
Showing Original Post only (View all)Prejudice against whites is not the same as prejudice against blacks [View all]
Prejudice against men is not the same as prejudice against women.
Prejudice against straight people is not the same as prejudice against those who are not.
Most here will grant that judging someone on the basis of their innate characteristics (race, ethnicity, orientation,gender) is wrong. In that sense, prejudice is the same...but there's more to it and it makes all the difference.
If one is prejudiced against a white person, the larger culture is not backing that up.
For example, in the case of Trayvon Martin, it's not just that he was suspected and then killed as a result of prejudice by one person against African Americans, it's that in the aftermath, media coverage and societal reaction included vicious stereotyping that sought to justify his death. That was possible because such stereotyping is believed and accepted so widely.
And in the case of Sandra Fluke, her health care needs were viewed differently because she was a woman. While it would be wrong if a man's health care needs were discounted by an individual simply because of his gender, that would be wrong. But what wouldn't happen to a man, that did happen to Sandra Fluke was that her personal life was widely used to suggest that she didn't have a right to health care. Denial of health care to a man would not be accepted by society at large on the basis of whether or not he has sex, but for this woman, it was widely accepted as relevant.
All this said, my argument is that when prejudice is dominant against minority groups (or groups treated in similar fashion), individual discrimination is not the exception, it's symptomatic of a societal problem and experienced by people as institutional discrimination because these feelings are so widely held.
And even if a belief isn't held universally, that there is s substantial or even dominant belief in racial, gender or other stereotypes makes it that much harder for the victim of discrimination to overcome the effects of individual prejudice against them.
That is why though discrimination against people when they are white or male or straight, while wrong, often doesn't have the impact on the individual that it does on a minority individual.
This is why it's important to understand the difference between individual prejudice and widespread racism and prejudice. The latter is much more powerful and has made second class citizens of a large percentage of Americans who live with fewer economic opportunities and greater mistreatment by society simply because of the color, gender or other ways that they were born.