Prejudice In America

The United States is a country built on the oppression of others. It started with the brutalization of the Native Americans, then the capture and enslavement of thousands of Africans, and even today continues on through the mistreatment and underpaying of many immigrate groups. In the United States and even in other countries people are sold the idea of the American Dream, a philosophy that states that anyone can succeed in American if their willing to work hard enough, but so far it is still only a dream. Although no one wants to believe that they have an unfair advantage, in this country certain opportunities are only given to those who are seen as having the “right” skin color, gender and sexuality. Speaking about the injustice in the society …show more content…
Though when a person is making prejudgments about social groups in which they are not a part of this type of judgment is called prejudice. Prejudices are not fair whether they are positive or negative. Whether a person is good, bad, smart or dumb cannot be determined by what culture the person is from. To simplify a social group characteristics, also known as stereotyping, is how prejudice starts to manifest. Stereotypes have no truth to them, but because people want to believe them they purposely look for those who fit into certain stereotypes and ignore or other those who don’t. When people give stereotypes significance is when they officially become prejudices. Prejudices are internal feeling and attitudes but when people act externally because of the certain prejudices they hold it turns into discrimination. There are many different forms of discrimination and they can range from ignoring someone to committing violence against them. Even though many can easily see the effect of committing violence against someone ignoring someone who is in need is just as damaging. Like prejudices, everyone has discriminated against someone though the impact of the discrimination depends of the societal position of the …show more content…
Having intuitional power allows a group to be in a position where they will be able to force their culture norms and socialization onto other cultural groups. Oppression is not done on a situational or individual basis. The oppression of a group can take place for over hundreds of years and affects everyone in that social group. A social group experiencing oppression is keep from getting complete access to all the resources society has to offer. The people who benefit from the oppression of another group have privilege. Those who fit the social justice definition of privilege do not have to be incredibility rich or never experience hardships, they just are born into a dominate group in society and have advantages gained from the oppression of others. When someone possess privileges they rarely even think about them. Many who have privilege are socialized to believe that they deserved to have advantages over others and are more superior to the minority groups who have little