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Prejudice and Discrimination 263

good and bad words are flashed on a screen along with photos of African Americans and
whites (Blair et al. 2013). Most subjects are quicker to associate positive words (such
as “love,” “peace,” and “baby”) with whites and negative words (such as “cancer,”
“bomb,” and “devil”) with blacks. Here’s the clincher: This is true for both whites and
blacks (Dasgupta et al. 2000; Greenwald and Krieger 2006). Apparently, we all learn the
ethnic maps of our culture and, along with them, their route to biased perception.
Individual and Institutional Discrimination

Sociologists stress that we should move beyond thinking in terms of individual discrimi-
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nation, the negative treatment of one person by another. Although such behavior creates Video: Race and Ethnicity:
problems, it is primarily an issue between individuals. With their focus on the broader The Basics
picture, sociologists encourage us to examine institutional discrimination, that is, to see
how discrimination is woven into the fabric of society. Let’s look at two examples.
Home Mortgages. Bank lending provides an excellent illustration of institutional
discrimination (Ropiequet et al. 2012). Earlier studies using national samples showed
that bankers were more likely to reject the loan applications of minorities. When bankers
defended themselves by saying that whites had better credit history, researchers retested
their data. They found that even when applicants had identical credit, African Americans
and Latinos were 60 percent more likely to be rejected (Thomas 1991, 1992). Look at
Figure 9.2 below. You can see that minorities are still more likely to be turned down for a
loan—whether their incomes are below or above the median income of their community.
In the Great Recession that we have suffered through, African Americans and Latinos
were hit harder than whites. The last set of bars on Figure 9.2 shows one of the reasons
for this: Banks purposely charged minorities higher interest rates, a practice called preda-
tory lending. The results were devastating. When the economic crisis hit, many African

FIGURE 9.2 Buying a House: Institutional Discrimination and
Predatory Lending

This figure, based on a national sample, illustrates institutional discrimination. Rejecting the
loan applications of minorities and gouging them with higher interest rates are a nation-
wide practice, not the acts of a rogue banker here or there. Because the discrimination is
part of the banking system, it is also called systemic discrimination.
45% 43
Whites
40%
Latinos
36
35% African Americans
30 30
30%
25 26
25%
20%
15
15% 14
11
10% individual discrimination per-
son-to-person or face-to-face dis-
5%
crimination; the negative treatment
These Applicants Were Denied a Mortgage These Applicants Were of people by other individuals
Applicants whose income Applicants whose income Charged Higher Interest institutional discrimination
was below the median was above the median (given subprime loans) negative treatment of a minority
income income Applicants who had
100% to 120% of median group that is built into a society’s
income institutions; also called systemic
discrimination
Source: By the author. Based on Kochbar and Gonzalez-Barrera 2009.