Dealing With Prejudice
Tommy Boone, PhD, MPH, MA, FASEP, EPC
Professor and Chair
Department of Exercise Physiologists
The College of St. Scholastica
Duluth, MN 55811

“Prejudice involves an unjustified, usually negative attitude directed towards others because of their social category or group membership.” – G.W. Allport [1]

It is the third element (group membership) of the quote by Allport that has personal meaning.  The idea that prejudice involves treating someone differently because his or her membership in an organization had not occurred to me prior to the founding of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists.  Since ASEP is important to me for the obvious reasons, I suppose I’m guilty of positive prejudices about its role in the professional development of exercise physiology.  However, in this brief article, I’m concerned about the negative prejudices towards ASEP membership.  

It has been evident from many different resources that non-ASEP members make demonstrably negative comments about membership in ASEP.  The prejudices are not only unjustified, but they can be very stressful.  After all, no one likes being told:  “If you join ASEP, you will not mount to anything in exercise physiology.”  This kind of negative biasing is harmful in many ways, such as when a person fails to join ASEP and otherwise could have contributed to the profession.  Or, the harmful effects may be felt in how the individual relates to members of the sports medicine group.  Behavior that is discriminatory toward others is seldom productive, regardless of the different goals and objectives.

This brings me to an important distinction between liking or disliking a colleague and prejudice.  For example, it is within one’s right to not like a person who is untruthful, deceitful, or who undermines an organization.  This is not a case of prejudice, especially when the feelings are justified [2].  It would be prejudice if your attitude of the person were shaped primarily by the fact that the person belongs to a competing organization.  In short, it is wrong to make judgments about individuals based on ideas, attitudes, or feelings about a particular group in which those individuals are members.  

Now, reconsider the intent of the earlier comment, “Don’t associate with ASEP.  No one important would that.”  The person is definitely holding a negative attitude about ASEP.  It is a clear illustration of prejudiced attitudes that are invariably inaccurate and unjustified.  Even though the college professor felt what he had said to his doctorate student was appropriate and, perhaps, even justified, it was inappropriate, unjustified, and fraught with errors of judgment.  The harmful effects of the professor’s prejudiced attitudes were clear to everyone.  What should the student do?  He felt strongly about membership in the ASEP organization.  Not becoming a member may result in missed opportunities for both personal and professional advancement.  

To bring this message home, has there been an occasion in which you were treated poorly because of your membership in or support of the ASEP organization?  Have you been the target of negative statements or discriminated against because of your membership in ASEP?  If the answer is “yes” to either question, you may want to consider the following lines of thinking.

• The prejudiced person is protecting himself from his own academic faults and professional desires.  In most cases, the person is probably unaware of the negative or irrational statements.  Trying to reason with the person is likely to be unfruitful.  The person’s disposition is directly linked to an inner sense of reality that is unlikely to change.  Given this context, ASEP members will have to accept that members of other organizations who act in prejudicial ways should remain unreceptive to the destructive comments by making it clear that the comments are not welcomed.
• The prejudiced person values so highly being a member of a group that he is willing to pay the price and adopt the group’s views and attitudes toward members of ASEP.  In situations like this, you would expect the professional person to state his mind and not that of the group.  But, groupthink is a power force that drives prejudiced attitudes.  Here again, the best approach in handling such attitudes is to refuse to accept it.  This will force the prejudiced person to keep the views to himself.

Failing to speak up when negative comments are made about your membership in a particular group is not the answer. This is precisely why Sampson [2] states that we must make it clear that the comments are unnecessary, hurtful, and disappointing.  The assumption is that making your feelings known will help decrease the judgmental attitudes of the prejudiced person.  Another important step in dealing with prejudice is [according to Y. Amir] is the “contact hypothesis of ethnic relations” [3]. 

“That contact between people – the mere fact of their interacting – is likely to change their beliefs and feelings toward each other ….If only one had the opportunity to communicate with the others and to appreciate their way of life, understanding and consequently a reduction of prejudice would follow.” – Y. Amir [3, pp. 319-320]

This is the reason why the ASEP National Meeting is open to all exercise physiologists, regardless of their group membership.  It is reasonable to expect from such meetings and conferences that the first step of coming together and understanding each other’s issues and concerns should lead to the second step of reducing prejudices within exercise physiology.  Of course the success of the second step is dependent upon the participants’ desire to reduce tensions and prejudices.  This would mean that two different groups would learn from each other as long as they work together.  

The idea of continuing to compete against each other would only slow the process of integration and shared reduction in prejudice thinking.  Creating a shared interest in some form of cooperative or collaborative work on behalf of all exercise physiologists is a goal worth working towards.  But, until the tendency to understand the role of power by size plays in targeting individuals or groups for prejudice, the control that it attempts to exact on individuals and groups is significant.  Remember, however, the process of seeing their use of power is inappropriate begins with informing the prejudiced person or group that such beliefs and discriminatory actions are not welcome.  Similarly, it should be clear to the prejudice professors who put down the ASEP organization and its leadership that the comments are causing more harm than good.

Academic exercise physiologists have the opportunity to gain compliance from students to attend national meetings.  They are, in effect, therefore, the gatekeepers who reward and punish students.  From a variety of perspectives, it would be the non-prejudice step towards decreasing prejudicial beliefs if professors would use their power to shape the lives of their students in positive ways.  It is the just thing to do if they really want to work on behalf of their students’ education and career options.  As the students gain in self-esteem and confidence in their own professional credibility as exercise physiologists, they then can help others with the forming of their identity as future healthcare professionals.     
 

References
1. Allport, G.W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley.
2. Sampson, E.E. (1999). Dealing With Differences. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.
3. Amir, Y. (1969). Contact Hypothesis of Ethic Relations. Psychological Bulletin. 71:319-343.