Sophia Morrison

Berry (1998) notes that minorities’ disempowerment and discrimination are often determined by the characteristics of the dominant groups, such as their openness to share privilege and status, the nature of relationships between groups (e.g., positive or tension-filled), and levels of tolerance or embracement of difference or diversity. Other

Lev Vygotsky, a leader of this approach from early in the twentieth century, pointed out that children in all communities are cultural participants, living in a particular community at a specific time in history. Vygotsky (1987) argued that rather than trying to “reveal the eternal child,” the goal is to discover “the historical child.”

Similarly, the just world hypothesis states that our thoughts about experiences are influenced by our need to believe that the world is a just place in which good people are rewarded for their positive deeds and bad people are punished for their wicked ways (Lerner, 1980).

“Whiteness is an historical, cultural, social, and political category” created in part by the fact that “Whiteness is so often invisible to White people but not invisible to people of color” (p. 12).

Racial categories are arbitrary and contingent on the goals and theories of the classifier (Marger, 2015).

Assumptions are the things you don’t know you’re making, which is why it is so disorienting the first time you take the plug out of a washbasin in Australia and see the water spiraling down the hole the other way around. The very laws of physics are telling you how far you are from home.

Likewise, sexual orientation is another form of social stratification. This is perhaps most poignantly illustrated by continuing discrimination and hate crimes that are directed toward gays and lesbians. Also, homophobic political rhetoric in the ongoing debate on same-sex marriage echoes discriminatory attitudes that fueled the antimiscegenation