Everyone I like stays the hell away from me. Attitudes are alive and well and gainfully employed in the sphere of action. The concept attitude should refer to evaluation of objects and only to such evaluations. Our measurement procedures frequently confound what an individual knows about an object and his or her evaluations of that object. Similarly, some have combined measures of what an individual believes should happen in a situation with evaluations of the expected outcomes. Some people cannot make a clear distinction between their evaluations and expectations. Prejudice is thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant. Prejudgments becomes prejudice only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge. Still, prejudice, in a general sense is an inevitable part of contemporary life. Therefore, an analyst finds it necessary to distinguish the prejudice that is truly problematic—in effect, to distinguish simple prejudgments from prejudices. The preferred distinctions posit that the categorical usages of importance are those that are basically inaccurate (stereotypes), or so emotionally engaged that they are rigid (irreversible on new evidence), or those that violate established normative standards (regarding equality, fairness, and so forth in social relations). #RandolphHarris 1 of 8

A rigid emotional attitude toward a human group can be considered irrational. As far as prejudice is concerned, the key point is that social categories are wrongly conceived to have qualities that inhere in the very nature of the category. The errors come in misconceiving and misjudging such groups, and the individual members thereof, as a consequence of misreading the nature of the category involved. Often enough the misreading occurs because the cultural and historical sources of supposed category qualities are not take into account or are attributed to irrelevant features of the category, that is, to a gender, relation, ethnic group, or disability. What makes all this extremely tricky is that it is difficult to demonstrate what, in fact, the appropriate characterizations are for the social categories we find it necessary to employ; and given the powerful control that majorities exercise, pressures are generated that tend to socialize the members of a given category into the very features we discern: some groups are seen as intellectual, others as hostile, or indolent, and dependent. Thus, though demonstrable relevance (correctness) of the attributed qualities to the category is critical, there is typically a seeming relevance (a misread relevance) that beclouds the issue both for the participant and the analyst. #RandolphHarris 2 of 8

We are concerned with differential access to desired goals on the basis of irrelevant (incorrect) attributions concerning a social category. Prejudice is delicate and difficult. People can and do discriminate without prejudice (as, for example, in refusing to sell their houses to certain people strictly for fear of what their neighbors will do); and they may also put the attitudes of others into the service of discrimination by arguing that hiring a member of a certain race or gender or religion will hurt their business. Some people will choose economic success over nondiscrimination. No theory of prejudice that depends upon contact experience and its generalization can account for the results of demonstrating high cross group intolerance. The generalized roots of prejudice can hardly be either experiential or rational, hence one must look to deep-lying personality for their source: what binds together these illogical antagonisms is their psychologic. There must be a psychological unity that explains these mental bonds. Prejudice is basically a trait of personality. The specific object of prejudice is more or less immaterial. What happens is that the whole inner life is affected; the hostility and fear are systematic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8

In a fifteen-city study under the auspices of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the evidence concerning cross-situational variation in attitude toward interracial Black-White contact is impressive: in a sample of some 3,000 Whites, 90 percent were consistently optimistic when presented with four different types of contact (working with a Black supervisor, neighborhood integration, children’s playmates, and personal friendship)—and 94 percent accepted all four of these interaction. In addition, 86 percent said they would not mind at all working with a qualified Black supervisor; and 51 percent said they would not mind at all if a Black family with equivalent income and education moved in next door. Attitudes are not general enough to predict behavior across even a relatively narrow range of situations, so that the analyst is forced either to narrow the prebehavior measurement drastically to behavioral intentions that are almost directly matched with the behavior that is being predicted (“Do you intend to cut your sociology class on Wednesday?”) or at least to require, not only a measurement of one’s attitude toward an object, but also an attitude toward the situation in which the object-related behavior takes place. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8

When it comes to prejudice, it is not only ethnic attitudes that have been found to be problematic, but a host of other attitudes and personality traits as well; the evidence is distinctiveness rather than generality. For instance, you may not mind having neighbors of a different ethnicity, when a small community gets in influx of people, who are all related, have an unusual culture, are loud, curse and party at all hours of the night, fight and do drugs, steal, vandalize property, assault others for fun, invade privacy, hack into personal information, gossip, lie, try to poison others, and collectively slander, and are disrespectful, it leads to distrust and unhappiness because they force their culture on you and it may be offensive, illegal, harmful, and deadly.  Some might consider residential movement to avoid the unacceptable levels of integration. This causes ecological succession in which older and less desirable housing stock filters down to lower status classes, and leads to a neighborhood turnover. It is a tipping point that stimulates exodus to suburbs and newer suburban areas. The attraction of new suburbs only available to middle and upper-class people, and the growing housing needs of the poor sometimes leads to blockbusting—the intentional place of undesirable people in a previously upscale neighborhood to create panic and forcing people to sale for profit, while they can. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8

High education is associated with greater tolerance; and indeed, the differences by educational level are sometimes quite impressive. People tend to want to live around those with similar family backgrounds, friends of a certain status, people who share personal experiences, and other idiosyncratic influences. More than 40 percent of people say that the upper-class has a right to keep the lower class out of their neighborhood, and that the lower classes should respect that. 56 percent say that the lower class themselves (not discrimination) are responsible for their inferior jobs, education, and housing; 42 percent agree that certain groups of people use shady practices to get what they want. And contrary to conventional wisdom, social classes indices are of little help in predicting either the perceived environment of the respondent or drug-related behavior among adolescents. Family and friends can basically be seen as a way of focusing on cultural norms and that is often invoked to explain the generalities of widespread attitudes of ethnic rejection, the variety of people encompassed, and the stability of stereotypes. Some people do not want their families involved with others who are known to do drug, prone to certain diseases like lying and jealousy, or who have wild parties and drink. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8

There are also people in society who have a deep faith and God and follow the divine laws and human laws very closely, but do not want their family to be involved with the church nor the media because they see them as “Starters,” which means they are the people who often facilitate trouble. These individuals who like their privacy only want their family to go to work and school and socialize limited with people who are known to be good and safe. There are people who want to protect their family and maintain family values. It is a method to get their family to conform and not be exploited by someone looking for a story, trying to build a case, and ruin their reputation and life. Discipline is conductive to the modeling of the parental attitudes, it is inclined to the child to seek parental approval by internalizing parental attitudes. The prejudice of conformity is not necessarily the active prejudicial hostility of the true bigot. It is one thing to ask about the bigotry that is manifested in strong, situationally unattuned hostility, and that which is simply conventional learning. Some people simply want to make sure their children reflect the everyday and ubiquitous learning of the “right” things to say and do. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8

The authoritarianism is concern with trust, rigidity, obedience, and so forth, and so it does not correlate with prejudice, but rather the meaning, coherence, consistency, and stability. This disposition is not immediately related to the exclusion of any race or class, but with more generalized personality like attitudes of trust, anomie, or status-mindedness. The behavior represents a fact of life. God is wonderful in his design and excellent in his workings. Believer, God overrules all things for your good. The needs-be for all that you have suffered has been most accurately determined by God. Your course is all mapped out by your Lord. Nothing will take him by suppose. There will be no novelties to him. There will be no occurrences which God did not foresee, and which, therefore, he had not provided. God has arranged all, and you have but to patiently wait, and you shall sing a song of deliverance. Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding his character, in trusting in his promises, and leaning on him and resting in him as the sovereign who knows that he is doing and does all things well. Holy, holy God; we believe that you are holy, and that you were a spirit, and that you are a spirit, and that you will be a spirit forever. And the Lord provided for us that we should not hunger nor thirst. He also gave us strength, that we should suffer no manner of afflictions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8