Immigrants and Trump Supporters: A Prejudice Exercise

• In Event: 3423 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable
  In Informal Discussion Roundtable: Table 10: Political Climate and Civic Engagement

Abstract

In this presentation, I will describe an in-class exercise that illuminates prejudice principles while incorporating current events and critical analysis practice. Using Bogardus’ Social Distance Scale, students confidentially rate how much distant they desire from various social groups. Distance options include marriage, close friendship, neighbor, coworker, citizen, visitor to country without citizenship, and banned from visiting the country. Recently, I added the Taliban, immigrants, and Trump supporters to the list of social groups. After examining our class data for Japanese, Mexicans, Mormons, and Jews, some students are stunned by the amount of distance their course-mates desire from these groups. The focus of our discussion though is why people want varying amounts of distance from different groups. After offering explanations for the specific distance desired from each group, we examine patterns across kinds of groups and kinds of explanations, and how these patterns have changed over time. The last groups we consider are the Taliban and Trump supporters as students report wanting the most distance from these groups. Indeed, most students in this upper division sociology course are comfortable, even gleeful about, expressing animus towards Trump supporters with many responding that they should be banned from the country. With substantial and careful analysis, including comparisons to our discussions of other social groups, students observe difficult to capture social psychological concepts in action in themselves and their course-mates. For example, when two course-mates chose to come out as Trump supporters, students re-evaluated the rapid-fire listing of reasons they offered for desiring so much distance from that group. Students characterize this activity as revealing, moving, and memorable.

Author

• Mel Moore, University of Northern Colorado