6.2d Prejudice and Discrimination

Social groups use stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination to maintain stratification. Stereotypes are specific and oversimplified beliefs about social groups based on age, gender, race, skin color, education, body size, and so on, and are typically harmful. They provide a foundation for prejudice and discrimination.

Prejudice is a person’s feelings about a group, often based on stereotypes. Positive stereotypes may make people feel more positive toward a group. Harmful stereotypes may make them feel more hostile. Discrimination is differential treatment toward a social group that is usually negative.

Micro-Level

At the micro-level, a college professor might stereotype college students as lazy because they have students who come to class or do not turn in assignments. These are negative stereotypes and may lead the professor to feel negative toward all their students. They might create a stringent attendance policy as a result. Their attendance, policy, however, might inadvertently discriminate against students with disabilities, low-income students, or student parents who may need a more flexible attendance policy to succeed.

Macro-Level

Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination are also macro-level phenomena. Further, historical stereotypes and prejudice can lead to ongoing discrimination.   

In education, one historical result of discrimination was that state laws and school policies prevented formerly enslaved people and free Black people from enrolling in existing schools. Thus, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the United States’ first historically Black college and university (HBCU), was founded in 1837 to provide access to a college education. HBCUs include public and private colleges, some set up as land-grant universities under the Morrill Act (1862). This act gave states federal land to finance colleges teaching agriculture, mechanics, and military curricula.

Due to racial exclusion by existing universities and the U.S. government, the Second Morrill Act (1890) required states to create schools for Black students, increasing the number of HBCUs. Of the 69 land-grant universities, 17 are HBCUs. Historically state legislatures have given them less funding compared with other land-grant universities (Brooks, 2021). The creation and continued underfunding of HBCUs highlights ongoing discrimination affecting Black people.

Photo 6.5

Southern University’s, and HBCU, Marching Band

SouthernUvsTSU111117#19  [Photograph], by 2C2KPhotography, 2022, Flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/2cheap2keep/37975766414/in/photostream/). CC-BY-2.0.

Affirmative Action

Most colleges did not begin admitting Black students until the 1950s. During the 1960s, affirmative action was established to remedy past discrimination by taking positive steps to increase the number of qualified members of underrepresented groups in college and employment but who had been excluded because of their race or gender. As a result, universities could consider race as a factor in admission decisions for qualified applicants to address racial inequality and to increase campus diversity. Black students and members of other underrepresented groups increased in numbers in higher education. Affirmative action benefitted White women in college admission because colleges could also factor in gender in admission of qualified women (Crenshaw, 2007).

In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action policies are unconstitutional in higher education. This ruling meant that colleges could no longer consider race in admission decisions. Nine states already had laws banning the use of race in college admission (Debusmann, Jr., 2023). States with such bans have seen a decline in the number of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students attending college (Colin & Cook, 2023). The impact is uneven. However, the decline in enrollment by underrepresented racial and ethnic groups has been most noticeable at state flagship universities. The University of California’s Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses saw a decline of 60% in enrollment from these groups between 1994 and 2021 (Bleemer, 2021).