Let Them Eat Harmony Summary

In “Let Them Eat Harmony: Prejudice-Reduction Strategies and Attitudes of Historically Disadvantaged Groups”, the authors have some interesting opinions about intergroup prejudice issue. The issue has been rethinking from psychological perspective. According to the author “harmony with good relations and conflict with bad relations is limited”. Two models are discussed in this article. One is prejudice-reduction model and the other one is collective-action model.
To begin with prejudice-reduction model. As an important tradition of social psychological work on prejudice reduction, the contact hypothesis is believed to be mainly focused on historically advantaged groups by the authors. Which means, in the contact hypothesis, to reduce prejudice is mainly rely on how historically advantaged groups think of this issue. Their attitude is the key point in it. I agree with the authors that this method may offer benefits for the society, however, if the issue only relies on advantaged groups, how can I believe the prejudice is decreased? Because disadvantaged groups are not even be thinking of as the main character in this issue.
On the other hand, the collective-action model mainly focused on members …show more content…
However, this might makes them neglect some racial discrimination issues. Based on my personal experience, I would agree with this point because of the sympathy we have. What I want to say is, when the interracial friendship is built, people might underestimate the potential prejudice within the relationship. This might happen especially when joking among friends. The experiment conducted is another proof of false expectations of fair treatment. Within a harmony contact, historically disadvantaged groups are more likely to expect more fair treatment than they really