2/7/2017 The Ladder of Prejudice – Gordon W. Allport – Mr.

Larson's Learning

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The Ladder of Prejudice – Gordon W. Allport

The Nature of Prejudice: The Escalating Levels of Prejudice

In his book The Nature of Prejudice psychologist Gordon W. Allport describes a kind
of ladder of negative actions that spring from prejudice. It is interesting to compare
how the ladder of prejudice worked in the past and how it works today. It is possible to
see parallels in history that help to explain or clarify what happened in Nazi Germany.

Allport’s Ladder of Prejudice:

1. Spoken Abuse—the first rung on the ladder of negative actions is speech. This often
takes the form of talking or joking about a group as if all members of that group were
one personality or had one set of features. Spoken abuse includes all of the following:

• Degrading names

• Verbal attack

• Stereotyping

• Music/songs that are degrading

• Jokes

• Rumors

• Ascribing evil motives and behaviors to a whole group/class of people

2. Avoidance—is the second rung of the ladder. At this level people seek to avoid the
group which has been stereotyped. Like speech, this seems harmless in the beginning.
One has the right to choose one’s friends, and choosing not to be friends with a particu-
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2/7/2017 The Ladder of Prejudice – Gordon W. Allport – Mr. Larson's Learning

lar group of people does not seem so awful. The trouble is that lack of contact and
friendship with a group leads to ignorance about them. Ignorance, in turn, leads to
stereotyping, fear, and prejudice.

Avoidance includes the following:

Avoiding homes, schools, and churches

Avoiding businesses and recreation areas/activities
Boycotting *

This separation/avoidance breeds fear and increases negative feelings

* Boycott—a group refusal to have dealings with a certain person, store, organization,
race, etc. in order to express disapproval or to force acceptance of certain conditions.
(Please Note: Boycott has been used as both a positive force to fight prejudice and a
negative force to express prejudice.)

3. Acts of Discrimination—avoidance leads to the third rung, discrimination. The un-

wanted group is now kept out of some neighborhoods, shopping areas, social clubs,
schools, churches, gathering places, and public centers. Laws are enacted to enforce
this discrimination and make it legal for society to discriminate.

Institutional Racism = Legalizing prejudice, which includes the following:

Treating others as legally inferior

Segregation laws
All types of institutional racism, sexism, age-ism, etc.
Making legal distinctions that deny rights to others

4. Physical attack on people and property—such physical attack may be a mob’s ex-
pression of anger or resentment. It may take the form of gang warfare resulting from
prejudice, or it may take the form of defacing buildings or places of worship. Physical
attack includes all violence to people or property based on hatred, fear, ignorance, and
revenge. (When institutional racism is prevalent in a society, physical attack is likely to
go unpunished and may even be encouraged.)

• Such groups as the KKK and the neo-Nazis use forms of physical attack to frighten and
intimidate their victims, such as burning crosses, painting swastikas on synagogues, in-
citing riots, gay bashing, etc.

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• On the ladder of prejudice, the steps may be short between speaking against a group
and attacking it physically.

5. Genocide/extermination—the final step in the ladder of prejudice escalates from

murder to genocide and includes lynching, massacre, mass murder, and attempting to
annihilate members of an unwanted group.

Genocide = The systematic attempt to destroy an entire people

(Please Note: The actual word genocide was first used at the end of World War II during
the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials to describe the Nazi attempt to destroy the Jewish
people.)

Examples of genocide in history include the following:

• The Nazi extermination of the Jews and other enemies of the state (11 million)

• Cambodia in the late 1970s—the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot mur-
dered 3 million people (one-third of the population)

• White settlers/Native Americans

• KKK & white supremacists/ non-whites

• Ethnic cleansing in Y ugoslavia

• The anarchy and violence in Rwanda and Somalia

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