Universalizing SIT fails to distinguish prejudice from bigotry.
Evidence
Early versions of social identity and self-categorization theory constituted themselves as a theory of prejudice, keeping intact a ‘tendency to universalise the conditions for racism and a lingering perceptualism’ (Wetherell and Potter, 1992 , p. 47; see also Billig, 2002a ). According to this view, prejudices are either a matter of differentiation between groups, a problem of ethnocentrism that favours in-groups and denigrates out-groups, or an issue of a psychologically rational and valid product of the way members of certain groups perceive the social structure of intergroup relations. As theories of prejudice, social identity and self-categorization theory can only partly explain the cultural, historical and ideological specifi cities of prejudice, and fail to satisfactorily distinguish between prejudice and bigotry and elaborate on the possible continuum between depersonalization and dehumanization (Billig, 2002a , 2002b ). As Billig argues, in order ‘to understand the nature of bigotry, one needs to pay close attention to what bigots say and, in particular, to the ideology of bigotry’ (Billig, 2002b , p. 202). — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 391
Categorization
- SEED: Billig’s point — that understanding bigotry requires attending to bigots’ own words and ideology — is a strong essay angle: a methodological defense of discourse analysis over cognitive measures of prejudice.
Related
- Understanding prejudice requires locating attitudes in collective symbolic contexts (similarity 0.81)
- Researchers explaining prejudice essentialize bigots just as bigots essentialize their targets (similarity 0.80)
- Individual-difference theories cannot explain how prejudice reproduces as collective ideology (similarity 0.78)