Number range CHAPTERChapter 1
Introducing the Concepts of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Classroom Activities
1. We highly recommend using a values clarification exercise on the first day of class. Miriam Ma’at-
Ka-Re Monges (1998) has developed such an exercise for a multicultural class. Students are
encouraged to discuss five possible values and choose what they believe is the most important
value of such a course. This exercise is applicable to a stereotyping and prejudice course and is
available in Singelis, T. M. (1998) (Ed.). Teaching about culture, ethnicity, and diversity (pp. 3-7).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. It is important to set the tone for class discussion, which can easily become difficult to manage.
One possibility is to have the class set discussion rules. Another is to review listening skills with
the students. You might also ask students to work in groups and role play positive and negative
responses to mock students’ comments. Here are some example comments that were
controversial in our own classes:
a. Student A: I’m not anti-Catholic, but I just don’t think Catholics are Christians. They
worship false idols and pray to Mary instead of directly to God. I’ve heard they have to ask
the priest to say all their prayers for them.
b. Student B: How can a gay person be Republican? The conservative Republicans are the
ones proposing all the laws against homosexuals.
c. Student C: Let’s face it, men are responsible for all the violence in the world. You don’t see
women starting wars or beating each other up.
d. Student D: The Jewish people should have left Germany as soon as they heard about what
was happening in the concentration camps. I just don’t understand why they didn’t.
3. Christian Crandall and colleagues (Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002) have identified which
prejudices are socially approved and disapproved. Their research results are discussed in Chapter
10. However, this is a good time in the class to ask students to make similar judgments. You might
ask students, for example, to rate the groups Crandall et al. found to have the highest and lowest
approval ratings using their categorization method (i.e., definitely okay to have negative feelings
about this group, maybe okay, definitely not okay.) Results can be compared to Crandall et al.’s
findings. Discussion can focus on why some groups are acceptable whereas others are not and the
commonalities among the “acceptable” and “unacceptable” groups.
,4. Jeffrey Mio (personal communication) conducts a cultural activity wherein students are instructed
to “Match up with a partner. Every time you pin your partner's thumb for three seconds, you get a
piece of candy. Keep count.” After 30 seconds students stop and count the numbers of candy they
earned. What is important is that students from individualistic cultures inevitably turn this
activity into a competition. However, Mio points out that the person they thumb wrestled with
was called a “partner” not an “opponent” and that there was no limit on the number of pieces of
candy each person could earn. Discussion focuses on the reasons why this activity becomes a
competition and what this tells us about cultural influences on people’s behavior.
5. a) Have students think about creating a traditional family tree. What assumptions underlie the
creation of such a tree (e.g., one, lifetime heterosexual marriage that produces children, no step-
or half-siblings)? A typical family tree chart can be found at
http://c.ancestry.com/pdf/trees/charts/anchart.pdf. How easy or difficult would it be for your
students to create such a tree for their own family? How would they react if they were asked to
complete this tree as an assignment?
b) Have students create a cultural genogram. Yoko Totsuka developed this activity based on:
Hardy, K.V. & Laszloffy, T. (1995) The cultural genogram: Key to training culturally competent
family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(3): 227-237.
Students draw out their family of origin, extending it to at least three generations. Different
symbols are used to denote individuals and their relationships. For example, circles are used for
women, squares for men, and X denotes someone who is deceased. A line connecting 2 people
denotes marriage and a dotted line denotes an unmarried relationship. A descending line
denotes offspring, and a kite symbol denotes adoption. Once the basic diagram is constructed,
cultural factors are marked (e.g., race/ethnicity/migration history, gender roles, social class,
sexual orientation, and disability). A coding system (such as colors) can be used to indicate
different cultural factors. Next, closeness of the relationship is marked (e.g., wavy line for
conflicted relationship, double line for closeness, triple line for over involvement or
enmeshment, bar for relationship that has been cut off). Students then write a description of
their culture of origin, discussing their ethnicity and race and who in their family influenced their
sense of cultural identity. Possible points of discussion are how factors such as religion, sexual
orientation, or social class influenced the family, the stereotypes others hold about the students’
cultural group, and personal experiences with discrimination based on their cultural group.
6. The “privilege walk” is such a commonly used exercise that it is difficult to know who deserves
credit for its development. Several versions are available on the Web (simply Google “privilege
exercise”). The general form of this exercise is to line students up and ask them to take a step
forward each time a statement indicating privilege applies to them. Students see a visual
representation of the cumulative effects of privilege. The set of statements can reflect privilege
based on social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. Regardless of which set is chosen,
, we find students want to discuss other groups that are privileged. For statements about other
groups see:
Johnson, G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed ). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
McIntosh, P. (1989, July/August). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace
and Freedom, 10-12.
Our own students are fairly homogenous, so we modify this exercise by assigning students to a
social group (white male, black woman, lesbian, skin head racist, poor man). We find it
interesting to include disliked, but relatively privileged groups. Other variations include
awarding money to those to whom the statements apply and comparing the sums at the end of
the exercise. You can also have students count the number of statements that apply to them. Be
aware, however, than many students will have completed a version of this exercise; you may
wish to ask about that in advance.
7. Have students imagine the class is having a picnic and their task is to bring a dish that represents
their cultural background or ethnicity. What would they bring? Discuss how easy or difficult this
decision was for them and why. Link the discussion to the concept of White privilege.
Assignments
1. Students can complete 5b as a paper and/or can make an oral presentation based on what they
learned from the assignment.
2. Have students trace the history of miscegenation laws (prohibiting interracial marriage) in the
United States. When was the first law passed? How common were they? What cultural factors
influenced the decision to pass such laws? How were they affected by the increased immigration
that occurred early in the 20th Century? Which Supreme Court cases led to the overturning of
these laws (McLaughlin v. Florida, 1964, Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 1967)? What cultural
events preceded these decisions? Students could view the classic film Guess Who’s Coming to
Dinner (1967) for one social commentary on interracial marriage from that period. Ask students
to draw parallels between miscegenation laws and the current trend to legislate for and against
gay/lesbian marriage (depending on the country or the locality within a country). What current
cultural norms have influenced these legislative actions? What do they predict will happen to
those laws in the future (e.g., is it more likely to be legal or illegal over time)? Why?
,
Introducing the Concepts of Stereotyping, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Classroom Activities
1. We highly recommend using a values clarification exercise on the first day of class. Miriam Ma’at-
Ka-Re Monges (1998) has developed such an exercise for a multicultural class. Students are
encouraged to discuss five possible values and choose what they believe is the most important
value of such a course. This exercise is applicable to a stereotyping and prejudice course and is
available in Singelis, T. M. (1998) (Ed.). Teaching about culture, ethnicity, and diversity (pp. 3-7).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
2. It is important to set the tone for class discussion, which can easily become difficult to manage.
One possibility is to have the class set discussion rules. Another is to review listening skills with
the students. You might also ask students to work in groups and role play positive and negative
responses to mock students’ comments. Here are some example comments that were
controversial in our own classes:
a. Student A: I’m not anti-Catholic, but I just don’t think Catholics are Christians. They
worship false idols and pray to Mary instead of directly to God. I’ve heard they have to ask
the priest to say all their prayers for them.
b. Student B: How can a gay person be Republican? The conservative Republicans are the
ones proposing all the laws against homosexuals.
c. Student C: Let’s face it, men are responsible for all the violence in the world. You don’t see
women starting wars or beating each other up.
d. Student D: The Jewish people should have left Germany as soon as they heard about what
was happening in the concentration camps. I just don’t understand why they didn’t.
3. Christian Crandall and colleagues (Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002) have identified which
prejudices are socially approved and disapproved. Their research results are discussed in Chapter
10. However, this is a good time in the class to ask students to make similar judgments. You might
ask students, for example, to rate the groups Crandall et al. found to have the highest and lowest
approval ratings using their categorization method (i.e., definitely okay to have negative feelings
about this group, maybe okay, definitely not okay.) Results can be compared to Crandall et al.’s
findings. Discussion can focus on why some groups are acceptable whereas others are not and the
commonalities among the “acceptable” and “unacceptable” groups.
,4. Jeffrey Mio (personal communication) conducts a cultural activity wherein students are instructed
to “Match up with a partner. Every time you pin your partner's thumb for three seconds, you get a
piece of candy. Keep count.” After 30 seconds students stop and count the numbers of candy they
earned. What is important is that students from individualistic cultures inevitably turn this
activity into a competition. However, Mio points out that the person they thumb wrestled with
was called a “partner” not an “opponent” and that there was no limit on the number of pieces of
candy each person could earn. Discussion focuses on the reasons why this activity becomes a
competition and what this tells us about cultural influences on people’s behavior.
5. a) Have students think about creating a traditional family tree. What assumptions underlie the
creation of such a tree (e.g., one, lifetime heterosexual marriage that produces children, no step-
or half-siblings)? A typical family tree chart can be found at
http://c.ancestry.com/pdf/trees/charts/anchart.pdf. How easy or difficult would it be for your
students to create such a tree for their own family? How would they react if they were asked to
complete this tree as an assignment?
b) Have students create a cultural genogram. Yoko Totsuka developed this activity based on:
Hardy, K.V. & Laszloffy, T. (1995) The cultural genogram: Key to training culturally competent
family therapists. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 21(3): 227-237.
Students draw out their family of origin, extending it to at least three generations. Different
symbols are used to denote individuals and their relationships. For example, circles are used for
women, squares for men, and X denotes someone who is deceased. A line connecting 2 people
denotes marriage and a dotted line denotes an unmarried relationship. A descending line
denotes offspring, and a kite symbol denotes adoption. Once the basic diagram is constructed,
cultural factors are marked (e.g., race/ethnicity/migration history, gender roles, social class,
sexual orientation, and disability). A coding system (such as colors) can be used to indicate
different cultural factors. Next, closeness of the relationship is marked (e.g., wavy line for
conflicted relationship, double line for closeness, triple line for over involvement or
enmeshment, bar for relationship that has been cut off). Students then write a description of
their culture of origin, discussing their ethnicity and race and who in their family influenced their
sense of cultural identity. Possible points of discussion are how factors such as religion, sexual
orientation, or social class influenced the family, the stereotypes others hold about the students’
cultural group, and personal experiences with discrimination based on their cultural group.
6. The “privilege walk” is such a commonly used exercise that it is difficult to know who deserves
credit for its development. Several versions are available on the Web (simply Google “privilege
exercise”). The general form of this exercise is to line students up and ask them to take a step
forward each time a statement indicating privilege applies to them. Students see a visual
representation of the cumulative effects of privilege. The set of statements can reflect privilege
based on social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender. Regardless of which set is chosen,
, we find students want to discuss other groups that are privileged. For statements about other
groups see:
Johnson, G. (2006). Privilege, power, and difference (2nd ed ). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
McIntosh, P. (1989, July/August). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Peace
and Freedom, 10-12.
Our own students are fairly homogenous, so we modify this exercise by assigning students to a
social group (white male, black woman, lesbian, skin head racist, poor man). We find it
interesting to include disliked, but relatively privileged groups. Other variations include
awarding money to those to whom the statements apply and comparing the sums at the end of
the exercise. You can also have students count the number of statements that apply to them. Be
aware, however, than many students will have completed a version of this exercise; you may
wish to ask about that in advance.
7. Have students imagine the class is having a picnic and their task is to bring a dish that represents
their cultural background or ethnicity. What would they bring? Discuss how easy or difficult this
decision was for them and why. Link the discussion to the concept of White privilege.
Assignments
1. Students can complete 5b as a paper and/or can make an oral presentation based on what they
learned from the assignment.
2. Have students trace the history of miscegenation laws (prohibiting interracial marriage) in the
United States. When was the first law passed? How common were they? What cultural factors
influenced the decision to pass such laws? How were they affected by the increased immigration
that occurred early in the 20th Century? Which Supreme Court cases led to the overturning of
these laws (McLaughlin v. Florida, 1964, Loving v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 1967)? What cultural
events preceded these decisions? Students could view the classic film Guess Who’s Coming to
Dinner (1967) for one social commentary on interracial marriage from that period. Ask students
to draw parallels between miscegenation laws and the current trend to legislate for and against
gay/lesbian marriage (depending on the country or the locality within a country). What current
cultural norms have influenced these legislative actions? What do they predict will happen to
those laws in the future (e.g., is it more likely to be legal or illegal over time)? Why?
,
