The Individual Sources of Discrimination and Prejudice

Abstract

In Chapter 3 we examined discrimination and prejudice from a macrosocial perspective. Attention was focused primarily on economic and political interests and the institutions through which those interests were expressed. Although some reference to individual tendencies was necessary, they were mainly treated as background for the play of structural forces. We bring them now into the foreground. In this chapter we will be examining the degree to which hostility and discrimination can be accounted for by the study of individual needs, values, and attitudes. Some authors see individual tendencies and microsocial encounters as the major source of discrimination. Others downplay them or even regard the study of them as hindrances to understanding majority-minority relations. We see the structural and individual forces as parts of a single system.