ABSTRACT
The issues around difference, whether racial, ethnic, religious, class, or age, are extremely complex. An immense body of scholarly literature exists on these subjects. Realizing the potential importance of group descriptors will help any community promote better intergroup relations. This can be tricky. Sometimes an individual uses an offensive word deliberately or from indifference. Individual members of a group may not like the currently popular term. Most whites have no idea of the importance that being black plays in the lives of blacks or the high personal cost in their daily lives. This ignorance, even more than any lack of information about a particular term or aspect of black culture, leads to miscommunication and misunderstandings. While prejudice is a mental prejudgement based on race, discrimination is an action based on prejudice. The problem of perceptions by outsiders raises another crucial but complex issue, the accuracy of observations in situations involving race and the use of code words.
