However, the melting pot seemed to work only with Europeans and with some
drawbacks: Assimilation meant abandoning cultural traditions. Immigrant parents
punished their children for speaking the language from back home, and in a genera-
tion or two an entire cultural heritage was nearly forgotten. That was the price they
paid for becoming white.
Prejudice
Prejudiceis a set of beliefs and attitudes that cause us to negatively “prejudge” peo-
ple based on their social location. In the classic work on the subject, psychologist Gor-
don Allport defined prejudice as “a pattern of hostility in interpersonal relations which
is directed against an entire group, or against its individual members; it fulfills a spe-
cific irrational function for its bearer” (Allport, 1954, p. 12). For example, you may
decide not to sell your car to an Asian American because you believe they are bad
drivers, or you may decline to rent an apartment from a Hispanic owner because you
believe the building would be sloppily maintained.
Stereotypes
Often prejudices are based on stereotypes,generalizations about a group that are over-
simplified and exaggerated, and fail to acknowledge individual differences in the
group. For instance, if you believe the stereotype that Asians are gifted in science, you
will believe that it is true of all Asians, without exception. You will believe that any
Asian selected at random will be able to answer scientific questions, and will score
better on science exams, than any person randomly selected from another race. Most
likely, however, you will not reason it out in any systematic way: You will just ask an
Asian when you have a scientific question or be surprised when you meet an Asian
who is an art history major.
Recently I saw a scene in a movie in which a Black guy invited a White guy to
his house for dinner and announced that they were having chicken. “Oh, I love fried
chicken!” the White guy responded, associating “Black” with “fried chicken” as a
stereotype even though he knew, logically, that enjoying fried foods is not a racially
specific characteristic. In this case, they were actually having chicken curry.
Most stereotypes, like the association of “Asian” and “science” or “Black” and
“fried food,” refer to traits that only a small percentage of group members actually
possess, or that are no more common to group members than to any-
one else, so they are simply inaccurate and unfair. However, some
stereotypes are downright wrong: No one (or almost no one) in the
group possesses the trait.
In the early 1960s, Bull Connor, a sheriff in Alabama, commented
that “Blacks are intellectually inferior” and that therefore integration
would fail. In the 1980s, Al Campanis, an official with the Los Ange-
les Dodgers, commented that “Blacks are better athletes.” One occa-
sionally hears that Blacks are more “naturally” gifted basketball
players but that White players are “smarter” or “have a better work
ethic.” And for years, football quarterbacks were White, on the
assumption that you had to be a brilliant tactician, not a powerful ath-
lete, to play the position. There have also been several celebrated cases
in which public speakers spoke about these stereotypes, indicating that
they believe them to be true, that races and ethnic groups aresignifi-
PREJUDICE 251Talk radio star Don Imus lost
his job in 2007 after calling
the Rutgers women’s basket-
ball team “nappy-headed
ho’s.” n