Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived personal characteristics, such as political affiliation, sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, music tastes or other perceived characteristics.
Triple oppression, also called double jeopardy, Jane Crow, or triple exploitation, is a theory developed by black socialists in the United States, such as Claudia Jones. The theory states that a connection exists between various types of oppression, specifically classism, racism, and sexism. It hypothesizes that all three types of oppression need to be overcome at once.
The term "minority group" has different usages, depending on the context. According to its common usage, the term minority group can simply be understood in terms of demographic sizes within a population: i.e. a group in society with the least number of individuals, or less than half, is a "minority". Usually a minority group is disempowered relative to the majority, and that characteristic lends itself to different applications of the term minority.
Oppression is malicious or unjust treatment of, or exercise of power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on how it is practiced.
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power. It is a hierarchy within groups that ascribe them to different levels of privileges. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit.
The matrix of domination or matrix of oppression is a sociological paradigm that explains issues of oppression that deal with race, class, and gender, which, though recognized as different social classifications, are all interconnected. This theory also applies to other forms of classification, such as sexual orientation, religion, or age. Patricia Hill Collins is credited with introducing the theory in her work entitled Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. As the term implies, there are many different ways one might experience domination, facing many different challenges in which one obstacle, such as race, may overlap with other sociological features. Characteristics such as race, age, and sex, may intersectionally affect an individual in extremely different ways, in such simple cases as varying geography, socioeconomic status, or simply throughout time. Other scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw's Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color are credited with expanding Collins' work. The matrix of domination is a way for people to acknowledge their privileges in society. How one is able to interact, what social groups one is in, and the networks one establishes are all based on different interconnected classifications.
Intersectionality is a sociological analytical framework for understanding how groups' and individuals' social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Examples of these factors include gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, height, age, and weight. These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.
Social dominance orientation (SDO) is a personality trait measuring an individual's support for social hierarchy and the extent to which they desire their in-group be superior to out-groups. SDO is conceptualized under social dominance theory as a measure of individual differences in levels of group-based discrimination; that is, it is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups. It is a predisposition toward anti-egalitarianism within and between groups.
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza is a Romanian-born German, Roman Catholic feminist theologian, who is currently the Krister Stendahl Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
Reverse racism, sometimes referred to as reverse discrimination, is the concept that affirmative action and similar color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality are forms of anti-white racism. The concept is often associated with conservative social movements, and reflects a belief that social and economic gains by Black people and other people of color cause disadvantages for white people.
Social dominance theory (SDT) is a social psychological theory of intergroup relations that examines the caste-like features of group-based social hierarchies, and how these hierarchies remain stable and perpetuate themselves. According to the theory, group-based inequalities are maintained through three primary mechanisms: institutional discrimination, aggregated individual discrimination, and behavioral asymmetry. The theory proposes that widely shared cultural ideologies provide the moral and intellectual justification for these intergroup behaviors by serving to make privilege normal. For data collection and validation of predictions, the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale was composed to measure acceptance of and desire for group-based social hierarchy, which was assessed through two factors: support for group-based dominance and generalized opposition to equality, regardless of the ingroup's position in the power structure.
Social inequality occurs when resources within a society are distributed unevenly, often as a result of inequitable allocation practices that create distinct unequal patterns based on socially defined categories of people. Differences in accessing social goods within society are influenced by factors like power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, intelligence and class. Social inequality usually implies the lack of equality of outcome, but may alternatively be conceptualized as a lack of equality in access to opportunity.
Anti-oppressive practice is an interdisciplinary approach primarily rooted within the practice of social work that focuses on ending socioeconomic oppression. It requires the practitioner to critically examine the power imbalance inherent in an organizational structure with regards to the larger sociocultural and political context in order to develop strategies for creating an egalitarian environment free from oppression, racism, and other forms of discrimination in the larger society, by engaging at the legal and political level. In general community practice it is about responding to oppression by dominant groups and individuals. In social services it regulates any possible oppressive practices and helps in delivering welfare services in an inclusive manner.
In feminist theory, kyriarchy is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word was coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza in 1992 to describe her theory of interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Catholicism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, classism, xenophobia, economic injustice, the prison-industrial complex, colonialism, militarism, ethnocentrism, speciesism, linguicism and other forms of dominating hierarchies in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized. Whenever the term is taken to encompass topics that were not and could not be addressed by the original theory, the kyriarchic aspects in emerging fields of study such as mononormativity, allonormativity, and chrononormativity are likewise included.
Social privilege is an advantage or entitlement that benefits individuals belonging to certain groups, often to the detriment of others. Privileged groups can be advantaged based on social class, wealth, education, caste, age, height, skin color, physical fitness, nationality, geographic location, cultural differences, ethnic or racial category, gender, gender identity, neurodiversity, physical disability, sexual orientation, religion, and other differentiating factors. Individuals can be privileged in one area, such as education, and not privileged in another area, such as health. The amount of privilege any individual has may change over time, such as when a person becomes disabled, or when a child becomes a young adult.
Educational equity, also known as equity in education, is a measure of equity in education. Educational equity depends on two main factors. The first is distributive justice, which implies that factors specific to one's personal conditions should not interfere with the potential of academic success. The second factor is inclusion, which refers to a comprehensive standard that applies to everyone in a certain education system. These two factors are closely related and depend on each other for an educational system's success. Education equity can include the study of excellence and equity.
The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic racism, like residential segregation and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups.
Structural inequality occurs when the fabric of organizations, institutions, governments or social networks contains an embedded cultural, linguistic, economic, religious/belief, physical or identity based bias which provides advantages for some members and marginalizes or produces disadvantages for other members. This can involve, personal agency, freedom of expression, property rights, freedom of association, religious freedom,social status, or unequal access to health care, housing, education, physical, cultural, social, religious or political belief, financial resources or other social opportunities. Structural inequality is believed to be an embedded part of all known cultural groups. The global history of slavery, serfdom, indentured servitude and other forms of coerced cultural or government mandated labour or economic exploitation that marginalizes individuals and the subsequent suppression of human rights are key factors defining structural inequality.
Multiple jeopardy is the theory that the various factors of one's identity that lead to discrimination or oppression, such as gender, class, or race, have a multiplicative effect on the discrimination that person experiences. The term was coined by Dr. Deborah K. King in her 1988 essay, "Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black Feminist Ideology" to account for the limitations of the double or triple jeopardy models of discrimination, which assert that every unique prejudice has an individual effect on one's status, and that the discrimination one experiences is the additive result of all of these prejudices. Under the model of multiple jeopardy, it is instead believed that these prejudices are interdependent and have a multiplicative relationship; for this reason, the multiple jeopardy in its name primarily emphasizes the simultaneous existence of multiple forms of discrimination rather than the type of relationship among them. King demonstrates that those who face multiple jeopardy would might develop multiple consciousness, an awareness of systems of inequality working with and through one another, to support the validity of the black feminist and other intersectional causes.
Prejudice plus power, also known as R = P + P, is a stipulative definition of racism used in the United States. Patricia Bidol-Padva first proposed this definition in a 1970 book, where she defined racism as "prejudice plus institutional power." According to this definition, two elements are required in order for racism to exist: racial prejudice, and social power to codify and enforce this prejudice into an entire society. Adherents write that while all people can be racially prejudiced, minorities are powerless and therefore only white people have the power to be racist. This definition is supported by the argument that power is responsible for the process of racialization and that social power is distributed in a zero-sum game. This view is commonly shared by social liberals and progressives. It also been used to define other forms of discrimination such as sexism, homophobia, and ableism.
