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Associate Program Material

Discrimination Worksheet

Write a 100- to 200-word response to each of the following questions. Provide citations for all the sources you use.

• What is discrimination? How is discrimination different from prejudice and stereotyping?

The “Merriam-Webster” (2014), website defines discrimination as “the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people, or the ability to recognize the difference between things that are of good quality and those that are not. The ability to understand that one thing is different from another thing”. The way discrimination is different from stereotyping and prejudice is primarily because when you stereotype an individual or group, you make exaggerating comments about that particular group or person for example saying all black people listen to rap music or saying things like all jewish people are cheap. This might fit some individuals’ characteristics but it would be generally stereotyping the whole group if you are stating everyone of that age or race did the same actions.

• What are the causes of discrimination?

Discrimination is often based on ignorance, fear and stereotypical viewpoints. For example, religious and/or sectarian discrimination is often fuelled by people living and working in separate communities and therefore not having ample opportunity to interact with people from the other group. (Wright, 2014). Anything that divides humans has great potential to foster hatred and misunderstanding. Organized religion plays a particularly powerful role in determining attitudes towards outsider groups. The presence of highly charged religious belief can lead to direct religious discrimination (Christian versus Muslim, Catholic versus Protestant, etc.) but it can also influence attitudes towards other sections of society. Good examples are the attitudes that some religious groups have towards women or homosexuality....