C1: Prejudice

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Some causes of prejudice

DIFFERENCE - In general, people feel uneasy about people who are different from them. Most of us dress in similar ways, behave in similar ways and look quite alike. The person who is different troubles us.

GROUPS - Minorities often stick together in groups. This is quite natural. We all like to be with people 'in the same boat' as ourselves. But this can cause people to think that these minority groups are subversive and are not willing to fit in with the wider society. This can lead to intolerance and prejudice.

ECONOMICS - When black and Asian people first came to this country (as Jews had done before them) they usually settled near the ports where they arrived, near the industries that bought them over or where they had friends and family. Often such areas already suffered from unemployment and poor housing. White people who lived there were also poor and often blamed or resented these new immigrants for taking 'their' jobs.

Prejudice psychology

How is it that all of us can convert our uneasiness and suspicions into anger and hatred? The fact is that all of us are capable of being prejudiced and being comfortable about it at the same time. This happens because we experience:

PROJECTION - This is the way we cover up our own shortcomings by blaming them on other people. Have you ever said the phrase "Now look what you've made me do!" without real justification? That's projection.

DISPLACEMENT - This is the way we take out our anger on someone other than the person we are really angry with. For example when a kid is told off by his parents, he might kick the dog or shout at his sister. A teacher yelling at her class might just be having a bad day - that's displacement.

RATIONALISATION - This is the way we invent respectable reasons to cover up the truth. An example is the pupil who comes up with hundreds of reasons why they failed a particular exam and miss out the fact that they didn't do enough work for it.

Questions to ponder

Most people seem to find foreign names a bit 'funny'. But do we ever stop to think that Cohen or Smith may sound hysterical to the Chinese? We tend to think that we (the majority) always have a right to define what is 'normal' and what is 'abnormal'. How often do we say abnormal when we just mean different?

How many people who dislike the smell of curry give a thought to the fact that roast beef and cabbage may nauseate the Indians next door?

Why is it that black and Asian people are criticised for doing opposite things? i.e. they are criticised when they have jobs ("They take our jobs away") and they are criticised if they are unemployed (They come over here and go on the dole").

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