Nearly 150 years ago the Irish came to America as refugees fleeing Ireland in the wake of a famine. They were not embraced by the American public or looked at kindly. They were called undesirables who wanted Americans jobs, spoke differently and who practiced a different religion. This threatened the norms of American society. Long before the prejudice and discrimination against the Irish, was the prejudice and discrimination against the Jews called anti-Semitism. Since biblical times, the Jewish people have been poorly treated because they have their own beliefs and religion separate from those who came in and conquered their lands. They were made to live in groups, apart from the rest of society. They were forced to wear an identifiable garment so others would know they were Jewish and eventually they were taken from their homes and forced to live in concentration camps where they would be starved, experimented on, gassed and killed. This is all because they were looked at as different.
In the wake of all the rioting and unrest in the United States right now and in the past couple of years with the hate crimes, we have seen groups of people come together and embrace and lift up those people who are apart of cultures and backgrounds different from our own. An example would be the shooting at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, SC. A young man named Dillon Roof walked into a church where he studied and prayed with a few members of the congregation before opening fire killing nine people. This was a crime of hate that took place just after the shooting and later rioting in Ferguson, Missouri. Charleston did not see rioting and further hate being spread. Instead the community came together as one. A peaceful walk was organized to show support for the community and the entire country heard about the way Charleston handled such a terrible atrocity.
Prejudice and discrimination has been around as long as humans have been on the earth. We have our social groups we’re apart of and of whom we want to be favored by. The need for social identity and being a part of our in-group accounts for prejudice and discrimination. (Bourhis 2020) Those of whom are in the out-group are seen as competitors for the things we need or want. Books and manuscripts on how to effectively decrease such tensions have been written. One such book is called “Race, Prejudice and Education” by Harold Cyril Bibby. This book was written to help school teachers teach about racism and prejudice and how to use the information in a real life situation. Bibby informs us that most prejudices are acquired during adolescence. He also explains that each country experiences different types of prejudices and therefore the manuscript needs to be altered according to each countries need.
Bourhis, R. Y. (2020). A journey researching prejudice and discrimination. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 61(2), 95.