As future educators, you will soon be working with students from diverse backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, race, culture, language, social class, gender, religion, and ability. It is imperative that you enter the teaching profession with an open mind and positive attitudes towards students who are culturally different. Reflecting on our personal attitudes and beliefs is a necessary exercise if the future generation of teachers is to truly embrace diversity, help students overcome their own prejudices, promote positive intercultural relations in the classroom, and treat all students fairly and equitably.
PREJUDICE
Prejudice is defined as negative attitudes towards a group of people (e.g., towards people who come from a foreign country). Prejudice is a form of ethnocentrism. People who are prejudiced believe that the standards and values of their culture are superior to those of other cultures and should be used as frames of reference for gauging other cultures. People with prejudices look at the world through the lens of one perspective: that of their own culture, rather than trying to understand other cultural groups from the perspective of their members (e.g., in France, religious symbols are not allowed in public schools. Looking at this issue from the perspective of American culture, some people might view this in a negative light: as a violation of students' right to symbolic expression or religious freedom. Looking at the issue from the perspective of French culture would yield different results. Many people in France feel that religious symbols are unnecessary artifacts in school and that banning them from school can curb interethnic conflict and promote peaceful relations among students of different religious backgrounds).
HOW DOES PREJUDICE ARISE?
Prejudice is based on stereotypes and negative judgments about cultural groups that are different from our own. It comes from a lack of knowledge and understanding about the history, standards, and values of other cultural groups and from viewing other cultural groups as inferior to our own. Prejudice is likely to arise when members of different cultural groups have limited opportunity to come into contact with each other. Prejudice is also learned. It is passed on by families, social institutions, and the media). Prejudice may also arise when groups of people see themselves as having lower levels of status and power in society compared to other groups and having to compete with these groups for limited resources. This can negatively impact the attitudes and interactions that people have with other cultural groups (e.g., negative attitudes towards immigrants who are believed to take jobs away from other people). Prejudice can also arise when groups of people feel that the majority group is trying to strip them off their cultural identity and to assimilate them into mainstream culture. Some people may subsequently develop an oppositional identity (e.g., refuse to learn English because they equate learning English with losing their cultural identity).
IS PREJUDICE COMMONPLACE?
Prejudice exists in all ethnic and racial groups and also within the same cultural group. To a certain extent, we all have prejudices. Some of us have few prejudices; some of us have deeply ingrained prejudices. Since September 2001, some people see Arabs/Muslims as terrorists. Some people are racist. They strongly believe that their race is superior to another race. Hatred and racism, of course, represent extreme forms of prejudice. Sometimes, prejudice leads to discrimination against certain groups of people to prevent them from sharing equally in the rewards and privileges of society (e.g., African-Americans and women have been discriminated against in the course of history). Sometimes, extreme prejudice results in hate crimes (e.g., the beating and killing of a person).
CAN PREJUDICE BE OVERCOME?
Prejudice can be unlearned. The first step towards unlearning prejudice is to reflect on yourself and to identify the stereotypes that you have about different cultural groups (i.e., the wrong ideas that you formed and generalized to everyone in a cultural group). You can also take a number of tests to identify your hidden biases (Implicit Association Tests). You can read about different cultural groups, interview people from different cultural groups, and participate in cultural events in different communities. You can learn to practice cultural relativism, just like anthropologists do when they study other cultures. Cultural relativism is the idea that another culture is best understood from the point of view of its members. To practice cultural relativism, you have to learn to separate your feelings towards a given custom from understanding what it means to those who practice it.
View a video on bias and unlearning it:
MANIFESTATIONS OF PREJUDICE
Prejudice is oftentimes accompanied by ignorance, fear, and hatred. How is it manifested? It is typically manifested through people's opinions, judgments, and attitudes towards a given group of people, as well as through their behaviors.
Prejudice is clearly exhibited through the perpetuation of belittling beliefs and stereotypes about different cultural groups. Stereotypes are exaggerated beliefs, images or distorted truths about a given group or individual. Prejudice is also demonstrated through distrust of, as well as negative judgments, ethnocentric attitudes (e.g., "my culture is better than yours" attitude), racist attitudes, and intolerance towards certain groups.
Prejudice is further expressed through language in the form of linguistic biases (e.g., mankind vs. humankind), racial or ethnic slurs, bigoted comments, ethnic jokes, and overt negative judgments. In its most extreme form, it is displayed through acts of open hostility and/or violence.
WHAT IS TEACHERS' ROLE IN DEFUSING PREJUDICE?
Children learn prejudice at an early age from their parents, as well as from other adults and children. Around the age of four, they are aware of differences in physical appearance, language, and names. They become aware of religious and cultural differences later on in life. As children make sense of the differences that exist between people, they may hear and accept a number of stereotypes. When that happens, they are likely to develop distorted views of people who are different from them and to become intolerant. Prejudice creates social and emotional tension and may lead to fear, anxiety, hostility, and violence. It can undermine the self-esteem and self-confidence of students who are ridiculed and make them feel unaccepted, unworthy, and depressed. When that happens, students' school performance is likely to suffer.
Schools should be a place where children learn more than academic skills. Schools should also promote understanding and cooperation among people, not prejudice. To end prejudice in school, teachers need to teach a curriculum that presents multicultural perspectives and to educate students about bigotry and prejudice, including such issues as racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, anti-immigrant bias, and anti-disability bias. They should engage students in classroom discussions about negative feelings toward others and discrimination, as well as in activities that emphasize collaboration and team play and are graded on the basis of group achievement. This will help students to overcome the feelings of difference and separateness that they harbor. In addition, teachers should always strive to create a learning environment that embraces diversity, one where all students feel valued and where prejudice has no place.
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF PREJUDICE
There is evidence that teaching about diversity reduces prejudice. It is therefore essential that teachers discuss diversity in the classroom and promote appreciation and respect for cultural differences. How should teachers go about doing this?
Several approaches can be used to reduce prejudice among students, including films, audiovisual programs, and books that portray multicultural experiences, cooperative learning, anti-prejudice lessons, discussions, simulations, and multicultural education. Teachers can also require students to analyze text or speeches for faulty reasoning and over-generalizations, as well as reactions to different diversity issues.
Research has also shown that people who have a healthy self-concept tend to be less prejudiced. It is therefore important that teachers create safe and accepting learning environments, hold high expectations for all students, and engage students in meaningful learning experiences so that students can build their self-esteem and confidence and cultivate positive attitudes towards others.
In order to implement the above strategies into the classroom, prospective teachers need to receive training. It is essential that all teacher preparation programs in the United States engage future teachers in exercises aimed at reducing prejudice among themselves and students and also prepare them to use effective prejudice-reduction strategies in the classroom. Only then will teachers be able to help students overcome their potential biases and subsequently help to shape a better world.
Watch a video on selecting culturally balanced texts:
REFERENCES
Briggs, V. (2000). Immigration policy and the U.S. economy: An institutional perspective. In S. Steinberg (Ed.), Race and ethnicity in the United States: Issues and debates (pp. 253-266). Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Gollnick, D. & Chinn, P. (2021). Multicultural education in a pluralistic society (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Jacob, E. & Jordan, C. (1993). Minority education: Anthropological perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
NCCJ - The National Conference for Community and Justice. (2017). Breaking bias - unlearning. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/Nh0fsaUDlNw
Rumbaut, R. & Portes, A. (2001). Ethnicities: Children of immigrants in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Takaki, R. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown.
Teaching Tolerance. (2008). Selecting diverse texts and authors. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/6CJqe86uuMI
Willoughby, B. (2004). Beyond black and white. Teaching Tolerance, 25, 45.
