How might sociologists explain the existence of racism?

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How might sociologists explain the existence of racism?

According to Miles (1993), racism is a relatively new to the world.  There is no definition for racism in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1910.  The word was adopted in England in about the 1930’s and was used to describe the beliefs of Hitler and the Nazi party.  Rex (1986), Defines racism as, ‘deterministic belief systems about the differences between the various ethnic groups, segments or strata’.

Discrimination and racism are a form of prejudice which is usually a result of stereotyping.  Prejudice is a result of stereotyping because it is literally a per-judgement and involves having an attitude towards something or somebody that is not necessarily based on an accurate assessment of that object or person. ‘Allport’ (1954), describes prejudice as being “an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalisation.  It may be felt or expressed.  It may be directed as a whole or toward an individual because he is a member of that group.” These prejudice attitudes also have cognitive explanations as well as social explanations.  The cognitive explanation for prejudice is based upon the way humans categorise information.  Stereotypes are schemas that summarise data.  Like schemas stereotypes influence memory.  For example if you are told that someone is a librarian it may influence your recall of that person in the future.  By grouping people we form impressions quickly and use past experience to provide explanations about individuals that we do not know.  Stereotypes do help to assist our memory but they also cause us to over estimate differences between groups.

When discussing prejudice it is important to identify the concept of ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups.’  An in-group is the group which people feel that they identify with and an out-group is the people who aren’t in the in-group.  Members of their own ‘in-group’ often believe that there is a greater similarity between members of the out-groups that there is of their group.  This is known as the ‘out-group homogeneity effect’ and members of the in-group often believe that members of the out-group “all seem alike.”   The greater the perceived homogeneity, the more likely we are to overestimate the number of members who fit the stereotype.  This creates in-group bias, which is the tendency to give greater rewards and evaluations to in-group members and to generally treat people differently based solely on their group membership.  The homogeneity effect is greater between ethic groups because a member of a particular ethnic group can identify members of their own ethnic group better than someone who is not from that particular group.  This is because they find it easier to identify differences between people belonging to the same race because they are more familiar with certain features whereas someone who is of a different race may find it very hard to distinguish differences and have a tendency to believe that members of a particular race ‘all look very similar.’

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 This effect causes people to be quick to generalise one individual to the whole group.  This usually occurs because we fail to notice differences between out-groups because of the lack of contact between the two groups.  Contact with out-groups is usually limited by two sampling biases.  The groups usually only interact with each other in certain situations and often these situations are often at times of conflict.  Also if people do communicate with the out-group then they only interact with certain member, which does not enable them to form a fair representation of the group.

Tajfel, (1971), believed that in-group ...

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