Racism differs from prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of what?

The answer

Racism differs from prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of power and systemic oppression. In sociology, the three terms are layered:

• Prejudice is an attitude—a preconceived, usually negative belief or feeling about a group, held in the mind.
• Discrimination is an action—treating people unequally because of their group membership.
• Racism adds a third dimension: institutional and structural power that turns prejudice and discrimination into a system of advantage and disadvantage organized around race.

So the distinguishing factor is oppression backed by power. An individual can hold a prejudiced attitude or commit a discriminatory act without controlling institutions. Racism, in the sociological sense, operates through laws, policies, economic structures, education, housing, and criminal justice—embedding racial advantage and disadvantage into the fabric of society.

Why 'oppression' / 'power' is the key word

The formula many sociology courses use is: racism = prejudice + power. Prejudice alone is a personal bias; when a group with social, economic, and political power acts on that bias through institutions, it produces racism. That systemic quality is why racism persists even without individual bad actors—patterns baked into institutions keep reproducing unequal outcomes. This 'system of advantage based on race' framing (associated with scholars like David Wellman and Beverly Tatum) is what the exam answer is pointing to.

Why the other options are wrong

Common distractors include attitude, behavior, intent, and individual feeling.

• Attitude describes prejudice, not what makes racism distinct—so it cannot be the differentiator.
• Behavior/action describes discrimination, again a component rather than the distinguishing feature.
• Intent is misleading: racism can be unintentional, since structural racism produces unequal outcomes even when no individual intends harm. Focusing on intent misses the systemic point.
• Prejudiced feeling collapses racism back into prejudice, erasing the power dimension entirely.

Each of these captures a part of prejudice or discrimination but ignores the institutional power that specifically defines racism.

The bigger picture: institutional racism and the power debate

Institutional (or systemic) racism refers to discriminatory practices embedded in the normal operations of institutions—such as disparities in lending, sentencing, hiring, or school funding—that disadvantage racial groups regardless of any single person's intentions. This is why sociologists distinguish it sharply from individual prejudice.

The power dimension also drives a well-known debate: can anyone be racist, or only those with power? At the level of individual bias, anyone can hold prejudice against any group. But in the sociological definition that ties racism to institutional power, racism specifically describes the dominant group's systemic advantage. Understanding this distinction—individual prejudice versus structural power—is exactly the nuance that thin answer-key pages leave out, and it is what the correct answer 'oppression/power' is testing.