Coping Strategies with Discrimination

What is discrimination?

• Discrimination is the unequal or inferior treatment of persons on the grounds of certain characteristics like age, sex or ethnicity(Wikipedia, 2013).

Ladder of Prejudice

Antilocution Avoidance Discrimination

AttackAnnihilate

• Antilocution: This means a majority group freely make jokes about a minority group. Speech is in terms of negative stereotypes and negative images. It is commonly seen as harmless by the mojority. Antilocution it self may not be harmful , but it sets the stage for more severe outlets of prejudice.

• Avoidance: People in a minority group are actively avoided by members of the majority group. No direct harm may be intended, but harm is done through isolation. People in the minority group also feel safer avoiding the places that the majority may be found.

• Discrimination: Minority group is denied opportunities and services, so putting prejudice into action. Behaviours have the specific goal of harming the minority group by preventing them from achieving goals, getting education or jobs, etc. The majority group is actively trying to harm the minority.

• Attack: The majority group vandalise minority groups things, they burn property and carry out violent attacks on individuals or groups. Physical harm is done to members of the minority group.

• Annihilate: The majority group seeks extermination of the minority group . They attempt to eliminate the entire group of people(Allport, 1954).

How can I cope with discrimination?Strategies (general)(IP, 2011)

Denial of Discrimination

Avoidance

Avoidance

• What is avoidance?In psychology, avoidance coping, or escape coping, is a maladaptive coping mechanism characterized by the effort to avoid dealing with a stressor(Wikipedia,2013).

• For instance, if a person stops going out in restaurants because of a fear of not being let in, the effect is the same as with an actual systematic chain of discrimination: the person has effectively been excluded from the enjoyment of these services job.

• So, exclusion from society as one of the chief aims of discrimination has been achieved(IP, 2011).

Denial of Discrimination• Denial, in ordinary English usage,

is asserting that a statement or allegation is not true. The same word, and also abnegation, is used for a psychological defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence(Wikipedia, 2013).

How can I Cope with Discrimination?(Detailed) (Berjot &Gillet, 2011)

Coping aimed at projecting the personal

aspect of identity

Coping aimed at projecting

the social aspect of identity

Attribution discrimination İndividual mobilitySelf-handicapping

Decreasing importance of identity

Domain disengagementSelective affiliation

Coping aimed at enhancing the personal

aspect of identity

Coping aimed at enhancing

the social aspect of identity

Self affirmation

Social competitionPositive re-avaluation of comparison dimensions

New dimension comparisonSocial identity affirmation

Produced by

Sinan EğrikavukStudent at Department of Psychology at Maltepe

University

Bibliography Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Retrieved 4th of July 2013, from

http://karnach.co.uk/resources/Ladder%2Bof%2BPrejudice.pdf

Berjot, S. & Gıllet, N. (2011). Stress and Coping with Discrimination and Stigmatization. Retrieved 4th of July 2013, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110961/

Government of the Netherlands (2013). What is discrimination? Retrieved 4th of July 2013, from http://www.government.nl/issues/discrimination/what-is-discrimination

Wikipedia. (2013). Avoidance Coping. Retrieved 4th of July 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidance_coping

Wikipedia. (2013). Denial. Retrieved 4th of July 2013, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial