ecogitar: Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice

segunda-feira, 13 de dezembro de 2010

Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2712693/?site_locale=en_GB

Kristin J. Anderson, University of Houston-Downtown

http://www.benignbigotry.com/Site/Introduction.html

While overt prejudice is now much less prevalent than in decades past, subtle prejudice - prejudice that is inconspicuous, indirect, and often unconscious - continues to pervade our society. Laws do not protect against subtle prejudice and, because of its covert nature, it is difficult to observe and frequently goes undetected by both perpetrator and victim. Benign Bigotry uses a fresh, original format to examine subtle prejudice by addressing six commonly held cultural myths based on assumptions that appear harmless but actually foster discrimination: 'those people all look alike'; 'they must be guilty of something'; 'feminists are man-haters'; 'gays flaunt their sexuality'; 'I'm not a racist, I'm color-blind' and 'affirmative action is reverse racism'. Kristin J. Anderson skillfully relates each of these myths to real world events, emphasizes how errors in individual thinking can affect society at large, and suggests strategies for reducing prejudice in daily life.

How the Media Frames Political Issues

In The Emergence of American Political Issues (1977) McCombs and Shaw state that the most important effect of the mass media is "its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."[13] The presidential observer Theodore White corroborates this conclusion in The Making of a President (1972):

The power of the press in America is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping political power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk and think about - an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.[14]

McCombs and Shaw also note that the media's tendency to structure voters' perceptions of political reality in effect constitutes a bias: "to a considerable degree the art of politics in a democracy is the art of determining which issue dimensions are of major interest to the public or can be made salient in order to win public support."[15]

http://www.scottlondon.com/reports/frames.html