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Enjoying Your Work Richard Brislin |
Prejudices deny societal
benefits and restrict
contentmentWhenever people from different cultural backgrounds come together, there is the danger of reactions that are based on prejudice. This term is complex and has many aspects, but a good start at understanding it is to look at the root terms. "Pre" means before, and here it refers to people's reactions that occur before firsthand experiences and before careful thought. The second part of the term refers to "judging." People, when confronted with differences, make judgments based on those observed differences and avoid the hard work necessary to understand specific people. There are various forms that prejudice takes, and over the next few weeks, I'll describe the forms and give examples.
The best known, and most difficult form to change, is racism. If people have prejudiced views that are racist, they believe that other groups of people have less ability, are less intelligent and should take jobs that don't demand much more than unskilled labor. Often, racism is learned during childhood, and young people are taught not to associate with members of certain other groups because it will bring shame to their families. Racist beliefs are often aimed at people from other cultural groups whose members have different skin colors, languages and everyday means of satisfying life's basic requirements.
Racism has the terribly unfortunate set of beliefs that people in other groups are inferior by the very fact of their birth or biology. Thus people guilty of racism believe that the targets of their prejudices just can't help themselves. "They were born that way, and so it's a waste of time to try to do much about it." Such beliefs put the others at a disadvantage. If they are considered inferior, they are not chosen to be interviewed for career-developing positions and instead become shunted aside into dead-end jobs.
Other intense prejudices are similar to racism in that they deal with birth or a biological fact about people. These prejudices are sometimes referred to as the "isms" and deal with gender-based groups (sexism), the handicapped, older people (ageism) or people who are not physically attractive (lookism). The similarity to racism is that people, because of a biological fact, are given a label that has major implications for their chances at finding happiness. They are denied societal benefits that are available only to those with the power to put their racist beliefs into the maintenance of discriminatory social policies.
Prejudices based on racism are extremely difficult to change. Many of these prejudices stem from people's childhood years, the time they were learning what society considers right and wrong. Unfortunately, many people learn that it is "right" to treat others as if they are inferior. Sometimes, years and years of positive experiences with members of other groups help people overcome the prejudices of their childhood. Sometimes, people approach prejudice reduction through their religious beliefs. A person from Texas once told me: "I grew up with a prejudice against Afro-Americans. Studying the Bible, I came to the conclusion that this was simply not right. I now run a business and hire people from all the local ethnic groups. And I pray every day that I can behave in a decent way toward everyone."
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
The purpose of this column is to increase understanding of human behavior as it has an impact on the workplace. Given the amount of time people spend at work, job satisfaction should ideally be high and it should contribute to general life happiness. Enjoyment can increase as people learn more about workplace psychology, communication, and group influences.
Richard Brislin is a professor in the College of Business Administration, University of Hawaii. He can be reached through the College Relations Office: cro@cba.hawaii.edu