Prejudice targets act as strategic agents rather than passive victims

Evidence

Like Allport, contemporary researchers also tend to conceptualize targets of prejudice not as passive victims, but as motivated (i.e., strategic) agents attempting to make sense of their world and to protect their identities from threat. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 931

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the contemporary shift in stigma research; also resonates with Tajfel and Turner’s social identity theory framing elsewhere in stigma literature. — connects to: The distinctive new prejudice is interpreting subordinate demands as illegitimate pushiness — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 3415; Prejudiced targets cope via assimilation, resistance, or pluralism — Jeff Greenberg and Spee Kosloff, Terror Management Theory: Implications…, 75; Casting targeted actors as irrational masks their strategic rationality and motives — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 351