Discrimination: individual, institutional, and structural

Duration: Approx. 15-20 minutes

Introduction

Now that you’ve worked on exercises on discrimination and racism, let’s deepen your understanding of anti-racism concepts by working with definitions. First, you should assign six concepts in the context of discrimination and racism to one definition. In order not to let the definitions be theoretic, you should then give examples of the concepts. This underlines how pervasive and equally subtle discrimination and racism are in our everyday lives.

exercise

Debriefing

In this exercise, you have deepened your understanding of the different levels (individual, institutional and structural) of discrimination. We have also presented three different definitions and concepts of racism. The concept of racism can be defined in other forms and manifestations in order to highlight the specific characteristics. At the same time, it should be noted that racism in any form always has two characteristics: the construction of the group as inferior and its dehumanization to the point of its annihilation.
It should also be noted that the different levels of discrimination cannot be understood separately from each other. Institutional discrimination is embedded in structural discrimination, and it is from these two levels that individual discrimination also arises. We have learned to act discriminatorily because of institutions and structures.

In the same way, we can also unlearn it.

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