Beyond prejudice: relational inequality, collective action, and social change revisited

This response clarifies, qualifies, and develops our critique of the limits of intergroup liking as a means of challenging intergroup inequality. It does not dispute that dominant groups may espouse negative attitudes towards subordinate groups. Nor does it dispute that prejudice reduction can be an effective way of tackling resulting forms of intergroup hostility. What it does dispute is the assumption that getting dominant group members and subordinate group members to like each other more is the best way of improving intergroup relations that are characterized by relatively stable, institutionally embedded, relations of inequality. In other words, the main target of our critique is the model of change that underlies prejudice reduction interventions and the mainstream concept of “prejudice” on which they are based.