Prejudice surfaces when groups seek roles they have not previously held

Evidence

When social, political, or economic circumstances change, group members may attempt to gain access to roles they have not previously occupied. For example, the decline of birth rates in industrialized countries (United Nations, 2001) and the mechanization and commercialization of domestic labor has changed the status of women. Similarly, African Americans’ status changed when they migrated from the rural South to the urban North in the United States (Lemann, 1991). As large numbers of group members attempt to move into nontraditional roles, prejudice becomes a recognized social issue. Group members are thought to fit their traditional niches – that is, to have special qualities that enable them to do the work their group has always done. For example, 44 percent of survey respondents in the United States believed that it would be “worse for society” if most family providers were women and most of their spouses stayed home to raise children (Roper Center, 2000), presumably because of widely held beliefs that women are better suited to childrearing than men are. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 206

Categorization

• CANDY: The 44 percent stat on role-reversed families is a crisp dinner-party fact.
• XREF: connects to: Newly empowered groups often secure status by denigrating those they just left. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 112