Theories of Prejudice
Light (1985) gives the following explanations on the origin of prejudice:
- Economic theory – assumes that racial prejudice is a social attitude transmitted by the dominant ethnic majority class for the purpose of stigmatizing some groups as inferior so that the exploitation of the group resources will be justified.
- Symbolic theory – asserts that prejudice arises because a racial or ethnic group is a symbol or what people hate, fear, or envy.
- Scapegoat theory – maintains that human beings are reluctant to accept their mistakes for their troubles and failures so they look for an ethnic – minority to shoulder the blame.
- Social norm theory – asserts that ethnocentrism is a natural development of group living. Hatred and suspicion for the out-group are the standard and normal way of doing things, particularly in dealing with people.
When all the members of a group are “pre-judged” as immoral, backward, violent (or moral, peace-loving and brilliant), any evidence to the contrary is ignored. Members of the prejudged behaviour. Prejudiced persons have developed inaccurate and unsupported beliefs about persons groups against whom their prejudice is directed. They tend to resist scientifically established proofs against their fallacious beliefs.
Prejudice is manifested by one-sided arguments and judgments, a ready acceptance of false ideas about group, and the inflexibility with which such judgments and ideas are upheld. However, it can also be subjected to change.
Prejudice is learned through social interaction with others. It is not biologically inherited but it is transmitted through primary and secondary means of communication.
Prejudice serves as a convenient device for identifying and classifying people. Both majority and minority groups maintain a culture of jokes, epithets, clichés, and ridiculing or denigrating expressions to express symbolic aggression against each other, and the use of stereotype conceptions.
- Stereotypes are often simplified and unsupported generalization about others and are used indiscriminately for all cases. A few examples are Ilokano, “bantay kuako (heavy smokers) and “kuripot” (stingy); Pampagueno, “dugong aso” (dog blood or traitors); Batagueno, “balisong” (knife-wielding); Bicolanos, “Sili” (pepper or “hot” people).
1. Patterns of Competition, Conflict and Domination
As pointed out in the process of ethnocentrism, people tend to view their own way of life, including their behaviour, beliefs, values, and norms, as they judge others by these standards. When people are strongly ethnocentric, they are distrustful of outsiders, seeing them as symbols of strangeness, evil and danger.
When ethnocentric attitudes are coupled with intergroup competition for territory and scarce resources, an explosive social situation may arise. When two groups both strive for the same things – and they perceive their respective claims to be mutually exclusively and legitimate – the stage is set for conflict. In modern societies, the state has become the vehicle that enables one group to dominate and keep the other group subordinate. In sum, competition supplies the motivation for systems of stratification, and ethnocentrism directs competition along racial and ethnic lines, but power determines which group will subjugate the other (Noel, 1972; Barth and Noel, 1975).
2. Economic and Political Subjugation
The economic takeover of one nation by a more powerful one and the subsequent political and social domination of the native population is called colonialism. If the takeover of one nation is through the military superiority of the more powerful one for the purpose of territorial expansion and establishing colonies, it is termed as military colonialism. On the other hand, if the economic takeover is made through the great technological superiority of the more powerful one, the institutionalization of their businesses in their former colonies, the control and domination of most of a colony’s natural resources, the imposition of trade policies and economic treaties favourable to their side; the establishment of outlets for their surplus capital; the need for more cheap labor, raw materials, and markets to fuel their growing economy, the process is termed neo-colonialism or economic imperialism.
Under economic colonialism, a system of social stratification is created, where the natives perform the hard and dirty work – as laborers, industrial workers, farm hands, janitors, garbage collectors, porters, street sweepers, lowly clerks, while the few foreign capitalists and their allies in the government bureaucracy and few powerful native elite get a tight monopoly on power and control. A prime example is European colonialism, which began in the 15th century. Examples in the contemporary period is the economic domination of the 3rd World by the Western 1st World countries through their multi-national corporations, and impositions made by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; as well as in government treaties in favour or more powerful nations, such as Import Liberalization, Free Trade, Government Agreement on Tariff and Trade, and related trade agreements. Under these conditions, former colonies remain economically dependent upon their former colonizers and remain suppliers or cheap labor and cheap raw materials.
3. Displacement and Segregation of the Native Population
Economic and political subjugation of a minority population by a more powerful group is not the only pattern of conquest that occurs when different racial and ethnic group meet.
When a weaker group occupies a territory that a stronger group wants to inhabit, the stronger is likely to displace the weaker. Displacement of native population can be made possible through the influx of powerful settlers or invaders with their vastly superior weapons. It is typically found in areas rich in natural resources and similar in geography and climate to the homeland of the invading group. Displacement takes the following forms: a.) by attrition, that is, numbers of the weaker group may die of starvation or disease either deliberately or not; b.) by population transfer; and c.) by genocide – deliberate and ruthless extermination of the weaker group. Examples: by destroying the principal means of survival; by introduction of disease for which the natives lacked natural immunities; program of mass extermination, and displacement of tribal groups from their ancestral lands, to give way for “developmental” projects. (Light, 1985).
Segregation involves the enactment of laws and/or customs that restrict or prohibit contact between groups. Segregation may be ethnic or racial or based on sex or age. Example, the Jim Crew laws which provide legal and social barriers constructed in the South in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to prevent Blacks from voting, using public facilities, and mixing with Whites. (Ibid.)
4. Patterns of Accommodation and Tolerance
Interracial and interethnic accommodation can be carried out through miscegenation or amalgamation – the intermarriage of members of the majority and minority groups. This can result in the blending of their various customs and values and the creation of a new cultural hybrid. This involves a cultural and biological blending in which the customs and values of both groups are to some extent preserved and their biological characteristics appear in the offspring. This is the “melting pot” concept popularized by the writer Israel Zangwill (1909). Blending is more likely to occur when ethnocentrism is not strong and when power among various racial and ethnic groups is relatively equal and when relations among them are more cooperative or competitive.
5. Patterns of Acculturation and Assimilation
In acculturation, the different ethnic groups selectively borrow elements from each other’s cultures while retaining basic aspects of the culture of their former respective societies. In assimilation, the different ethnic groups evolve a common culture and simultaneously level out their sub-cultural differences. Assimilation also involves the incorporation of a minority into the culture and social life of the majority such that the minority eventually disappears as a separate, identifiable unit. The process of assimilation entails long period of living with the majority group where the minority group proceeds from attaining survival to a life of dignity and respectability.
6. Patterns of Cultural Pluralism or Ethnic Diversity
Cultural pluralism refers to the coexistence of different racial or ethnic groups each of which retains its own cultural identity and social structural networks, while participating equally in the economic and political systems. (Light, 1985)
In a pluralistic society, each group retains its own language, religion and customs, and its members tend to interact socially primarily among themselves. Yet all jointly participate in the economic and political systems and live in harmony and peaceful “coexistence”. A prime example of such an arrangement can be found in Switzerland. There, people of German, French and Italian heritage preserve their distinct cultural ways while coexisting peacefully and equally. No one group enjoys special privileges or is discriminated against.
