Question: could you easily articulate the difference between prejudice, discrimination, unconscious bias and stereotype?

The truth is, these four words have distinct meanings, yet often get used interchangeably, which means the work of diversity, equity and inclusion often becomes confused and lacking in aim. When prejudice, stereotypes, unconscious biases and discrimination go unexamined, they create a vicious cycle, feeding into one another, and continuing to oppress people by ethnicity, sexuality, disability, gender, socioeconomic status, and in so many other ways. We end up systemically dehumanising individuals and entire groups of people.

That's why we've spent November defining these four words as part of our #DiversityDictionary word of the week series.

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

Unconscious bias is the unintended preference or preferences that we have, either towards or against people, which affect the decisions and judgments we make every day.

The word ‘unconscious’ in unconscious bias is important. It means that these biases live in the part of our mind that is beyond our conscious awareness and happening on autopilot. But, importantly, they do drive our behaviours.

Certain scenarios can activate unconscious attitudes and beliefs. For example, biases may be more prevalent when multi-tasking or working under time pressure. (Source: USCFODO)

In these scenarios, we are less self-aware and more likely to default to our autopilot tendencies to get a task done. And in most circumstances a lack of awareness of biases leads to discrimination.

While biases may be unintended, that doesn’t make bias-based discrimination acceptable. Yet there is often a resistance and defensiveness when it comes to understanding biases – an internal script that says: ‘I would never discriminate against someone intentionally, therefore I don’t need to change anything about myself’.

Another barrier to transforming biased behaviour is the failure to link biases to systemic oppression. Our biases are informed by what we’re absorbing from the people, culture and institutions all around us. And because systemic oppression operates through all these channels, we are internalising oppression almost from the minute we’re born.

While people may resist being called racist or homophobic, the truth is our biases make us capable of doing and saying things that are racist, homophobic, or in other ways oppressive. In short, our biases have the power to perpetuate oppression.

Even with the growing concern around the effectiveness of unconscious bias training, we believe that the right kind of education around biases, that links it clearly to the many forms of oppression that exist in society, can lead to systemic change.

STEREOTYPE

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or group of people.

We’re exposed to stereotypes through media, culture and society all the time. Stereotypes serve to uphold the white-supremacist-hetero-ableist-patriarchy by reducing entire groups of people – usually marginalised communities – into overly simplistic characteristics in a way that is dehumanising.

As the Nigerian author ​​Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie has said: “The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Here are some examples of harmful stereotypes: Disabled people are exaggerating their condition to gain sympathy. Women are incapable of controlling their emotions. People from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are irresponsible with money. Trans people are deceitful.

It’s important to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a positive stereotype. For example Asian communities in the west encounter the ‘model minority’ myth, which suggests that all Asian people are overachievers who achieve financial success in spite of racism. This may sound like a positive generalisation, but it puts undue pressure on people from those communities to live up to a false ideal, and erases the complexities of living in a white supremacist society as an Asian person.

There’s an important link that many people fail to make: our unconscious biases are informed by the stereotypes we absorb throughout our lives. They make us judge one person or group of people as either ‘like me’ or ‘unlike me’, which can in turn impact how we behave with them. In this way, stereotypes also lead to prejudices and discrimination.

We’re all exposed to stereotypes through mainstream culture, so it can sometimes be difficult to recognise them. But we all have a responsibility to actively seek out stories that defy stereotypes and allow us to see the complexity of human experience, as this will aid us in counteracting unconscious biases against those who we perceive to be different to ourselves.

DISCRIMINATION

Discrimination is when a person or a group of people is treated unfairly or unequally based on characteristics such as race, sexuality, gender, disability, age, and many more.

The human brain naturally puts things in categories to make sense of the world. Very young children quickly learn the difference between boys and girls, for instance. But the values we place on different categories are learned – from our parents, our peers and the observations we make about how the world works. (Source: APA)

Often, discrimination stems from fear and misunderstanding that has been embedded in us through society, culture and stereotypes.

Discrimination is illegal in many parts of the world. For example, the Equality Act 2010 in the UK makes it illegal to discriminate against anyone because of: age, gender reassignment, being married or in a civil partnership, being pregnant or on maternity leave, disability, race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. These are known as ‘protected characteristics’ in the UK.

Around the world there are similar laws that exist to reverse oppressive policies and practices that were once the norm. But just because it’s the law, that doesn’t stop discrimination from happening.

There are many subtle forms of discrimination, that are hidden and hard to prove. One way this can happen is when people and organisations make ‘excuses’ for leaving people out.

For example, if a person is refused a job because they don’t ‘fit the culture’ that might seem like a fair reason, but organisations use the language of ‘culture fit’ to subtly discriminate against people who are from different ethnicities, faiths, ages or to discriminate against disabled people.

The word discrimination is often used interchangeably with words like prejudice, bias and stereotypes, but all these words have distinct meanings. Getting clear on what each means will help us get clear on how to take action against each of them.

PREJUDICE

An unjustified or incorrect attitude, usually negative, towards an individual, based entirely on that individual’s association with a social group.

Terms like prejudice, bias, discrimination and stereotype tend to get used interchangeably, which means that when it comes to taking action against issues that harm other people, people easily get confused or even defensive.

Here’s a clear distinction: while unconscious biases reside in our unconscious mind, prejudices tend to be more conscious. Prejudices are an attitude, which someone might hold to themselves that nobody else ever knows about.

A prejudiced person may not act on their attitude. Someone can be prejudiced towards a certain group but not discriminate against them. (Source: Simplypsychology.org)

For example, a person might hold the conscious attitude that people without university degrees are unintelligent. Or they might have a prejudice against women of a certain age who are unmarried and without kids. When these prejudices convert into a behaviour, that’s when they become discrimination.

In short. prejudice is an attitude. Discrimination is an action, or set of actions.

Our prejudices are often fed by stereotypes of historically marginalised groups in society and in turn can lead to further stereotyping. Stereotypes also inform our unconscious biases, and our biases perpetuate stereotypes.

Our mission at The Other Box is to make space for difference. Diversity Dictionary is where we explore meanings and histories of the language of diversity, beyond a dictionary definition, so we can all build a deeper awareness and critical understanding of perspectives that may be different to our own.

On all our social channels, we share weekly words and their definitions, with a different theme each month. These terms are a taster and have been taken from our Diversity Dictionary™ course in our TOB for Teams™ programme. If you'd like to learn more, check out our courses page and fill in the contact form. 

Is there a theme you’d like to see covered in Diversity Dictionary? Let us know! Our work is co-created by our community to work towards creating a world that is more inclusive and safe for everyone.

Words by Roshni Goyate

Header image by Fakurian Design on Unsplash