Conflict Theory Of Prejudice And Discrimination

Prejudice and discrimination are two words that every person is capable of acting upon. People have attitudes and judge people by the way someone may look or act. People discriminate about others before they know there story. We are all human, we make judgements in the first few second we meet someone. We judge people by their actions, looks, smell, attitude and their overall appearance. A lot of the discrimination comes from race and ethnicity. There are three ways in which we can look at prejudice and discriminations regards to race and ethnicity; functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism. Overall, which explains race and ethnicity better?
Functionalism explains prejudice and discrimination by putting people in groups by common interests. For example, at a boys summer camp they put them in cabins
Boys who had been life-long friends were ruined when they started to mock one another (p.273). The boys had developed this new social environments from there cabin, and changed them to react different towards others. "One could see that prejudice is functional, how it creates in-group solidarity" (p.273). However, it does change a person. Conflict theory explain prejudice and discrimination by limited resources. For example, "whites are aware that other racial-ethnic groups are ready to take their jobs, African Americans often perceive Latinos and competitors, and men know that women are eager to get promoted" (p.273). This causes a lot of action. People are fighting to stay on the job, and people who are fighting to stay off the streets to get a job. The split labor market helps divide people, but once the economy comes into play they start laying off people. Trying to find a job like being on the battlefield you do no what is going to happen. Whether you move forward with your life or you get shot down. Hence, why it is so hard to get a job because there are many like you who are trying to do the same thing.