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Race Prejudice: Sources of Race Prejudice and Methods to Eradicate it!
The consideration of race prejudice or race discrimination, which has split mankind into warring camps. There is much injustice to one race caused by another, for instance, in race slavery, Man’s inhumanity to man is often based on race.
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There are serious discriminations against a race based upon rights, opportunities and status. Race prejudice or apartheid is one of the greatest vices existing in this world and threatening the world peace.
Prejudice is “an attitude that predisposes a person to think, perceive, feel and act in favourable or unfavourable ways toward a group or its individual members.”
Prejudice means to prejudge. We prejudge readily when emotion forces us to a conclusion without much thought. Strong emotion blocks thought and blind us to observation. Once prejudice Lakes place, even facts will not eradicate it. Prejudice may make a man strongly favourable or strongly unfavourable towards a person or group of persons. Prejudice differs from discrimination. Discrimination is the differential treatment of individuals.
It is ordinarily the overt or behavioural expression of prejudice, but it may also occur without the accompanying feeling of prejudice. Much of the phenomenon of race prejudice is based on the assumption that ethnic differences between men are matters of blood, that they are biologically inherited along with such physical characteristics as eye, skin and hair colour; but as we have seen above, the view that some races are mentally superior to others due to peculiar biological traits is not yet proved. Even if all races were created exactly equal, race prejudice would not disappear. There would still be conflicts among races as there are wars between nations.
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Racial prejudice is not inborn. The first fact, therefore, to be borne in mind is that race prejudice is not inborn. The child is not born with prejudices of any kind. We find children frequently playing with the children of other races without any prejudice or discrimination. This prejudice is the result of social indoctrination that inculcates belief and attitudes which take firm hold through the process of habituation.
As Allport and Kramer observe, ‘The young child undoubtedly starts his life without prejudice, and during preschool years seems almost incapable of fixing hostility upon any group as a whole.” The acquisition of prejudice by the child is a gradual development. It is traceable to the process of socialization where “mine” becomes identified with “ours” and the child considers the members of his group superior to others in every field.
He learns to differentiate and rate others in terms of superiority- inferiority values and thus attachment and loyalty to those who share his prejudices. Group prejudice thus is not inborn but learned. Sometimes the seeds of prejudice may have been sown as early in the life of the child as to appear inborn, but in fact it is acquired.
We may put the various sources of race prejudice as follows:
(i) Economic Advantages:
One of the most important causes of race prejudice is the economic advantage which may accrue to the dominant group in certain circumstances. In ancient Greece and Rome aristocracies prospered at the expense of slaves; while in the U.S.A. the Negroes in the southern states provided cheap labour to the expanding economy.
These people were considered inferior and, therefore, given lower jobs without any hope of improvement. They became groups, from whom the rights of equal pay for equal work, equal schooling equal use of public facilities were withheld. The withholding of these rights was justified on the basis that they were inferior people and so less deserving.
Some of the professions are closed to them, even to the few qualified and trained persons. Segregation and discrimination gave rise to a vested occupational interest within the coloured class which at the same time was in accord with the economic interests of the White employers.
(ii) Political Advantages:
Sometimes race prejudices are fostered by the dominant group in order to keep or strengthen their political supremacy. In South Africa, the Indians, so- called Blacks, are denied the right to vote and hold public office so that the Whites may continue to enjoy political power. Similar is the case with Negroes in some of the southern states of the U.S.A. Political leaders are likely to rise to power to the extent they represent the norms of the voting populace.
Persons holding attitudes at variance with the norms are not likely to be elected. Thus as these leaders acquire power, they exert further influence in support of the status quo. The interests of the segregationist leaders in the southern United States are served by maintaining race prejudice against those of Negores.
(iii) Ethnocentrism:
Ethnocentrism is a feeling whereby the natives come to despise foreigners and feel superior to them. When this feeling grows lo exaggerated proportions, we have real chauvinism—an absurdly extravagant pride in one’s country with a corresponding contempt for foreign nations. We find an outstanding example of ethnocentrism in the message of Chien Lung, the Emperor of China, which was sent by him to King George III of England in 1793 through the King’s envoy. This message read:
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“You, O King, live beyond the confines of many seas; nevertheless, impelled by your humble desire to partake of the benefits of our civilization, you have dispatched a mission respectfully with your memorial If you assert that your reverence for our celestial Dynasty fills you with a desire to acquire our civilization, I may tell you that our ceremonies and codes of law differ so completely from your own that, even if your envoy were able to acquire the rudiments of our civilization you could not possibly transplant our manners and customs to your alien soil. Our Dynasty’s majestic virtue has penetrated into every country under Heaven, and kings of all nations have offered their costly tribute by land and see? As your ambassador can see for himself we possess all things, I have set not value on objects stranger or ingenious and have no use for your country’s manufactures.”
(iv) Compensation for Frustration:
Sometimes the minority group may be assigned the responsibility or blame for social and economic disturbances, and regarded as a scapegoat by the dominant group in order to vent on it its social or individual frustration which may be possibly due to the dishonesty or ineptitude of the ruling group. Simpson and Yinger write, “There is much evidence to indicate that the blocking of goal directed behaviour frequently creates hostile impulses in the individual.
In many instances this hostility cannot be directed towards the source of the frustration; there may be no human agent, or the agent may be unknown, or too powerful to strike. The hostility under such circumstances may be stored up, or it may be directed Loads oneself or towards some substitute target that is more accessible or less able to strike back.
In other words, “a free- floating”, undirected hostilely may result from frustration when the actual frustrating agent cannot be attacked; and the social context often favours displacement of this hostilely on lo minority-group members.” The Nazis in Germany blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and their failure to establish a stable political system.
In America the Negroes, the Roman Catholic and the foreigners in general are blamed for whatever phenomena are construed as maladies in the social order. They are construed as the cause of social disorganisalion or the threat to the economic and social salability of the country. The Jews especially during the last years have come to occupy this unhappy distinction.
Whatever the factors might have been for that, it may be reasonably said that they can be hardly construed as the cause of social disorganisalion, when they represent a tiny minority in the country. The fact of the mailer is that it is human psychology to think that one’s failures are not due to one’s ineptitude but due to the intrigues and machinations of individuals of a certain group whom he characterizes as inferior, mean and unscrupulous.
(v) Lack of Proper Education:
This is perhaps the most important cause of race prejudice. As Lord above, race prejudice is not inborn but learned. Indoctrinate gives to the individual the prejudicial attitude. He acquires other elements of social heritage. The youth in Soviet Russia were taught to despise everyone who does not believe in communism.
Thus certain unfavourable stereotypes about groups are formed in the minds from the very early childhood. Persons are known not by their personal characteristics, but by the name with which the group has been stigmatized. “The stereotypes”, says Rose, “are exaggerations of certain physical traits or cultural characteristics which are found among some members of the minority group and are attributed to all members of the group.” These stereotypes fulfill the role of condensing our knowledge of other people in a single formula; the Chinese being supposed to be laundiymen, the Scots tight fisted. The result is cheap and unfounded prejudice towards the other groups.
It may be observed that once prejudice against a group is well established, the accompanying feelings concerning that group acquire a normative quality. These feelings become a part of social norms. Members of a group expect each other to hold such feelings and those who do not hold such feelings, positive and negative sanctions are applied by the group against such members. It also happens that the persons who most strongly support the group norms including prejudice rise to positions of leadership.
How to Eradicate Race Prejudice:
Thus prejudice, hostility and group discrimination are not indulged in for their own sake but because they render or at least are supposed to render certain advantages to the groups that cling to them. Race is neither good nor bad it is racialism which is positively bad and mischievous. It acts as a strong barrier to cooperative social action. It leads to discrimination and injustice. Sometimes, it becomes a danger to world peace when racialism is implemented with the weapons of brute force as the Nazi ethno maniacs did.
In order to counteract race prejudice it is not sufficient to show the weakness of its unfounded assumption of racial superiority, but it is also necessary to educate properly the youth on the right lines and teach the indisputable fact that colour of skin, class, religious belief, geographical or national origin are no tests of social adaptability.
When the prejudiced American White youth sees that the Negroes, whom he has learnt to despise, are kind, well bred and intelligent, he will shed off his prejudices. A citizen is to be judged not by the colour of his skin but solely by the readiness with which he fits himself into the social structure and by the value of his contributions to the development of the country. The expansion of communications with its corresponding multiplications of contacts will also help in breaking down the race barriers wherever they-exist.
Accurate knowledge of the subject of race, information as to how cultures grow and why they are different and recognition of the fact that in the long run it does not pay either economically or politically, will go a long way in eradicating the race prejudice. A course in “Race Relations” may be imparted in our educational institutions.
In this connection, it is also worth mentioning that recently social scientists have added to their field the investigation of the principles, methods and techniques whereby group prejudices may be most effectively subjected to control. Anthropologists, psychologists and sociologists have done considerable work Lo this end.
Social organisations such as the U.N.E.S.C.O. are studying the conditions of international tensions and making concerted efforts to eradicate social prejudice. The U.N.E.S.C.O. arranged a conference of some prominent sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists.
The conference made the following observations on the problem of race:
(i) Fundamentally the entire human species has one origin and all men are homosapiens;
(ii) The differences between the physical characteristics of men are both due Lo heredity and environment;
(iii) The concept of racial purify is a myth;
(iv) Human races can be classified but these classifications have no relation with menial or intellectual superiority or inferiority;
(v) The capacity for the development of mind and culture is found equally in every race. Intelligent people are found in all races;
(vi) That intermixing of races is deleterious, is an incorrect belief.
(vii) Race has no important effect on the social and cultural differences between various human groups. There is no co-relation between racial and social changes.
(viii) It is possible that in one nation the degree of racial difference may be greater while in another nation it may be of lesser degree.