Prejudice and discrimination: Merton's paradigm

SIGNIFICANCE: Merton’s paradigm shows that prejudice does not always lead to discrimination and suggests that discrimination is not always directly caused by prejudice.

Prejudice and discrimination are crucial terms in the study of race and ethnic relations. In general discourse, they are often used as if they were interchangeable, but they actually denote distinct phenomena. Prejudice involves attitudes, thoughts, and beliefs about members of different groups (such as ethnic, racial, religious, or political groups). Discrimination, on the other hand, is action, either overt or subtle, that treats members of different groups differently.

Prejudice may be expressed in various ways, through negative terms, slurs, or jokes that denigrate members of ethnic groups or racial groups. Prejudice may also be expressed in discriminatory actions—hence the popular linkage between the terms.

Discrimination may take overt forms, as in an employer’s refusal to hire an Italian American or African American because the employer thinks that all people of Italian or African descent are incompetent, basing this perception on stereotypes rather than on an objective appraisal of the applicant’s qualifications. Discrimination also appears in the form of institutional discrimination or racism, which is a denial by society’s institutions of opportunities and equal rights to individuals or groups; this type of discrimination may be unintentional. A crucial point, and one that was long unrealized, is that individual prejudice does not necessarily express itself in discrimination; moreover, discrimination may result from causes other than prejudice.

Merton’s Paradigm

Sociologist Robert K. Merton proposed a typology or paradigm in 1949 regarding the relationship between prejudice and discrimination. Merton’s work was influential in clarifying these distinctions and in expanding the definition of discrimination to include institutional and unintentional discrimination. This paradigm appeared in an article entitled “Discrimination and the American Creed.” Merton attempted to show that, although prejudice and discrimination are related, one does not necessarily cause the other. Merton identified four categories of people according to how they rate on a scale of prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior.

The “unprejudiced nondiscriminators,” or “all-weather liberals,” are low in both prejudice and discrimination. People in this category usually believe firmly in the equality of all people, and they try to practice this belief. Yet committed as they are to equality, they often do have some shortcomings, according to Merton. For one thing, the all-weather liberals tend to be removed from reality, in the sense that they do not experience face-to-face competition from members of minority groups for limited resources.

The second category consists of “unprejudiced discriminators,” whom Merton also calls “fair-weather liberals.” Fair-weather liberals are low in prejudice, but they tend to discriminate against other people when it is expedient, as when it is profitable to do so. In Merton’s words, this person’s expediency may take the form of holding their silence and thus implicitly acquiescing in expressions of ethnic prejudice by others or in the practice of discrimination by others. This is the expediency of the timid: the liberal who hesitates to speak up against discrimination for fear they might lose status or be otherwise punished by their prejudiced associates. In South Africa, for example, under the rigid racial caste system of Apartheid that existed until 1994, many White people who themselves were not prejudiced remained silent about the injustices of Apartheid, under which the White minority maintained privileges and absolute control over society. The fair-weather liberals did not condemn the system simply because they were benefiting from it.

The third category of Merton’s paradigm involves people who do not believe in equality. These are “prejudiced nondiscriminators,” whom Merton identified as “fair-weather illiberals” and called “timid bigots.” They discriminate if there is no sanction against it; their discriminatory practices are situational. In the early 1930s, social scientist Richard LaPiere conducted a study in which he traveled in the United States with a Chinese couple to see how much discrimination they would encounter; prejudice against Asians was still quite strong at that time. LaPiere and his companions received warm treatment at nearly all motels, hotels, and restaurants they visited; only once were they refused service. Six months later, LaPiere sent a questionnaire to all the establishments, asking whether they would accept Chinese people as guests or customers. To his surprise, more than 90 percent of the responses revealed prejudiced attitudes and said that they would refuse service to them. This is a clear example of how prejudice does not necessarily translate into discrimination. A similar test was conducted in the 1950s with a Black couple, and similar results were obtained. People seem to be able to adjust their actions and attitudes according to what sociologist W. I. Thomas called the “definition of the situation.”

The final category in Merton’s paradigm is the “prejudiced discriminators,” also called “active bigots.” These people are high in both prejudice and discrimination. They openly express their beliefs and do not hesitate to discriminate publicly. Sociologist Thomas F. Gossett presented a good example of such people, noting that in 1932 a Southern Baptist leader refused to sit at a banquet table at a meeting because a Black person was present. Since court decisions and civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s outlawed discrimination, active bigots in American society have found it more difficult to practice individual discrimination. Hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, for example, continue to espouse their prejudiced views, even on national television, but when evidence of discriminatory actions is uncovered, legal cases are filed against the perpetrators. According to the social distance scale, active bigots tend to show a high degree of intolerance for, and unwillingness to accept, members of out-groups such as racial and ethnic minorities.

Context

The assumption of many people before the 1940s that prejudice was the single cause of discrimination was challenged when Merton introduced his paradigm in 1949. Since the 1950s, both social scientists and civil rights activists have made marked progress in confronting discrimination. Instead of focusing only on prejudice as the cause of discrimination, many scholars and activists have broadened their perspectives. Prejudice and discrimination have been viewed in various lights and attacked in various ways. Activist Paula Rothenberg, in her work Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study (1992), brings to light various facets of prejudice and discrimination. She also calls attention to the use and internalization of words that subtly perpetuate prejudice, such as “culturally deprived” and “underdeveloped,” which tend to be misleading as well as reflective of the attitude that only the dominant culture is acceptable and others are inferior. Awareness of how language can perpetuate prejudice and discrimination is another way of confronting the problem of racism. A broad analysis of the ways prejudice and discrimination actually exist in society, as in the case of Merton’s paradigm, shifts the focus from blatant and intentional expressions of racism to all forms of discrimination—some unintentional, some incorporated into the institutions of society—in the day-to-day functioning of society.

Bibliography

Batur, Pinar, and Joe R. Feagin. Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. 2nd ed., Springer, 2018.

Doobs, Christopher Bates. Racism: An American Cauldron. Harper, 1993.

Feagin, Joe R., and Clairece Booher Feagin. Racial and Ethnic Relations. 10th ed., Prentice, 2019.

Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America. Schocken, 1971.

Marger, Martin N. Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives. 10th ed., Cengage Learning, 2019.

McLemore, S. Dale. Racial and Ethnic Relations in America. 3rd ed., Allyn, 1991.

Rothenberg, Paula S., and Christina Hsu Accomando. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Intersectional Study. 12th ed., Macmillan Learning, 2024.