Guantanamo Bay

The purpose of this paper is to examine how being part of a stigmatized group contributes to prejudice and discrimination.

The situation of the Guantanamo Bay detainees is being used to look at this issue. Global Security, an organization based in Virginia, issued a recent report in February 2006 indicating that there are currently 329 detainees being held there. The report goes on further to explain that ever since 2001, over 100 have been released, meaning they pose no threat to the United States. Furthermore, the prisoners have included two men in their late 80s and 90s, a 12 year old boy, and several other young teenagers. Detainees were originally held because of some suspected link between them and al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups. Since then, over many who have been detained for several years have been sent back to their homeland, proving their innocence. What would lead the United State’s troops to capture so many people that are obviously innocent?

In recent years there has been a stigma surrounding Muslims and middle-easterners here in the United States, and the United States’ forces fighting the War on Terror may be mindful of this stigma when holding these people as detainees on Guantanamo Bay. Researchers have said that stigmatized groups “frequently are targets of stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination.”(Jones, 2002, p. 16). Furthermore, according to Fox (as cited in Jones, 2002), people are naturally predisposed to “rapid fire reasoning” to help people make decisions in unsure circumstances about a person of an out-group (p.19). In this case, it would be the people of middle-eastern descent, who are stigmatized already. That may help to explain why U.S. forces and other troops may