Causes of Prejudice

Prejudice is an opinion that is not based on actual evidence or experience. In â€Å"Causes of Prejudice,† Vincent Parillo describes the psychological and sociological reasons of prejudice. Among these causes, frustration is defined to produce a prejudicial attitude towards others. Parillo explains in his work that throughout history, minority groups have been used as scapegoats to take the blame for certain events. He clarifies that scapegoating is the act of blaming others for an incident that is not their fault. This idea is also visible in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in the part where a lawyer named Atticus tries to prove an African American innocent who has been falsely charged with raping a white woman. Therefore, both Parillo’s â€Å"Causes of Prejudice† and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird support that frustration is a cause of prejudice because of an increase in aggression towards a scapegoat. To begin with, frustration is caused by relative deprivation, which is the lack of resources in an individual’s environment when compared to others. This results in aggression towards a scapegoat in order to relieve this tension. â€Å"Frustrated people may easily strike out against the perceived cause of their frustration. However, this reaction may not be possible because the true source of the frustration is often too nebulous to be identified or too powerful to act against† (Parillo 583). His view is also seen in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Mayella Ewell claims Tom Robinson has raped her. Atticus tries to prove to the jury that Tom Robinson in fact did not rape Mayella and that she, a white woman, kissed Tom, a black man. Mayella is an Ewell; a very poor family in the town of Maycomb and therefore she has to live through tough conditions which include living behind the garbage dump, barely having any money to support her dad and seven siblings, as well as being beaten by her own father. Most importantly, she is frustrated that she always feels dissatisfied with her life since she was never able to experience any happiness by being isolated from the rest of the world. Therefore, she tries to at least kiss a black man to feel some sense of happiness. When she realizes it is condemned by society, her frustration increases partly because society is not allowing her to have a small amount of happiness, and so she shows her aggression by blaming Tom Robinson for raping her. In addition, aggression resulted from frustration is pinpointed towards scapegoats because they share similar characteristics of being vulnerable to blame. â€Å"The group must be (1) highly visible in physical appearance or observable customs and ac ¬tions; (2) not strong enough to strike back; (3) situated within easy access of the dominant group . . .† (Parillo 584). To Kill a Mockingbird takes place in southern Alabama in the 1930’s. This was the time period where prejudice against African Americans was present. Segregation was present because having white skin was seen to be better than having black skin. This simple difference in skin color resulted in an unfair treatment of African Americans. Separate bathrooms, drinking fountains, churches, and schools resulted for African Americans and whites. Also, since whites felt that the blacks were inferior to them, they tended to assume all blacks were unintelligent. When Mayella copes with her frustration of being isolated from the rest of the world by blaming Tom Robinson, the court looks at his skin color instead of the evidence given for this case. Even though Atticus provides plenty of evidence that proves that it was impossible for Tom to commit the rape of Mayella, Tom is still found guilty because even if Mayella is part of the lower class of Maycomb, she is still a white woman, making her superior to Tom Robinson. It is evident that frustration plays an important role in determining prejudicial attitudes. Both the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and â€Å"Causes of Prejudice† by Vincent Parillo, agree that frustration is caused by relative deprivation and when aggression forms, the blame is placed on scapegoats. These scapegoats share similar characteristics which allow them to be vulnerable to the blame that falls upon them.

UK Industrial Restrictions on Labour Relations Essay

UK Industrial Restrictions on Labour Relations - Essay Example Industrial Relations and the UK lawsContrary to common practice, the UK has demonstrated significant laxity in promoting exclusive protection of human rights as stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights. Specifically, the laws governing the entire United Kingdom are all statutory provisions with no written constitution. In addition, the UK government and the bicameral legislative system believe that all actions of the multitude must be controlled to ensure peace and vigilant administration (Geyer, Mackintosh and Lehmann 2005, p.137). For that reason, the legislature has since passed resolutions and Acts of Parliament that are essentially retrogressive to the freedom from forced labour or slavery in general. Ideally, the UK laws are strict in nature and most of them empower the government and employers to take necessary course of action against potential or actual breach of employment contract. While the law provides for industrial intervention, it is cumbered with several restrictions that render the practice a perpetual impossibility.On the other hand, Trade Unions in the UK are prohibited from supporting acts that might construe an inducement to breach employment contract or performance of such duties as appertain to the agreement between individuals and their employers (Gladstone and Wheeler 1992, p.35). Besides, the UK perceives strikes as an expressed act of breaking employment agreement while such actions ought to mean a suspended contract rather than breach.

The Greeks and Philosophy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Greeks and Philosophy - Research Paper Example For, â€Å"†¦without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of   the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.†2 Philosophy is about finding points that will lead one to theorize. Philosophy includes â€Å"†¦steps and points of departure into a world which is above hypotheses, in order that she may soar beyond them to the first principle of the whole†¦Ã¢â‚¬ 3 â€Å"Until the person is able to abstract and define rationally the idea of good, and unless he can run the gauntlet of all objections, and is ready to disprove them, not by appeals to opinion, but to absolute truth, never faltering at any step of the argument --unless he can do all this, you would say that he knows neither the idea of good nor any other good; he apprehends only a shadow, if anything at all, which is given by opinion and not by science; --drea ming and slumbering in this life, before he is well awake here, he arrives at the world below, and has his final quietus.†4 For Plato, what equaled philosophy included the truth. â€Å"And I thought that I had better have recourse to ideas, and seek in them the truth of existence.†5 Naturally, the most logical thoughts that were reinforced as correct were what Plato considered philosophy, saying that â€Å"†¦I first assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating to the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded as untrue.†6 True philosophy, after all, lies â€Å"†¦in [the] asking and answering questions†¦Ã¢â‚¬ 7 Rejecting the false and embracing the truth seems to have been what Plato was searching for all the time in his dialogues. The process of philosophy was about digging into the psyche to find a deeper truth. The process involves lots of rational thinking, evaluation, and critical thinking skills. Not only that, but Plato’s ideas of philosophy held fast to the ideas that what was good and virtuous were things that were worth philosophizing about. This process of parsing out what was good and virtuous in itself was worth it to Plato to take great pains to try to explain—in detail—what was worth expounding upon in his dialogues. Plato consistently maintained that philosophy was a constant search for that which was real, good, true, and reliable—versus that which was fake or a facade, bad, untrue, or inconsistent. Constistency is what made Plato such an emblematic figure in philosophy, because one knew what to expect from his type of logic. Therefore, his points were not only true but rational. B) Find at least two passages in the dialogues that were covered in this module where Plato shows Socrates entering into the dialectical process of Philosophy. Copy and paste the passages usi ng quotation marks and cite the source dialogue. You find two passages where Socrates is exchanging questions and answers with someone on a topic, issue or question. Where do you find these passages? Find them in any of these dialogues: ION EUTHYPHRO APOLOGY CRITO PHAEDO REPUBLIC SYMPOSIUM ?DO NOT USE THE SEVEN PASSAGES SUPPLIES IN PART A THAT DESCRIBE DIALECTICS! Those passages are not demonstrations of the process but are descriptions of it. How long do they need to be? Not the entire dialogue! Just submit a passage long enough to see the back