Sample Solution

Prejudice and discrimination are terms that are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings. Prejudice is an attitude based on limited information that leads to beliefs about a whole group of people or individuals. These attitudes can be positive or negative, but the most common are negative opinions that lead to unfair treatment and exclusion. Discrimination occurs when these unfavorable feelings and beliefs result in the unequal treatment of certain groups of people or individuals because of those prejudices, resulting in adverse consequences for them. This can take many forms such as verbal abuse, physical violence, employment practices, housing policies, interactions with law enforcement officers, etc (Davis & Syed-Abdulshafi 2020).

In order to understand prejudice and discrimination better from a historical perspective it is important to look at how they have been used throughout history. Prejudices were held by Europeans against other cultures during colonialism which was reflected by their lack of respect towards different customs and values (Hajdukowski-Ahmed et al 2019). Throughout U.S history there has been systemic racism which has resulted in inequalities between minority racial groups like African Americans compared to Whites. This includes oppressive laws such as redlining which prevented minorities from buying homes in certain areas as well being forced into lower quality schools due to segregation laws (Wise 2020). Even today we continue to see examples of discrimination such as unequal job opportunities for women or people with disabilities even though anti-discrimination laws exist (Deacon 2018).