The human poison of prejudice
IT WAS in 1958 that Gordon Allport famously observed that “civilised men have gained notable mastery over energy, matter, and inanimate nature generally, and are rapidly learning to control physical suffering and premature death.”
After that celebration of human civilisation and modernity Allport was to complain that “but by contrast, we appear to be living in the Stone Age so far as our handling of human relations is concerned.”
So many decades after Allport’s compelling study of “the nature of prejudice,” published in a book by the same title, one can observe that the world has become even more modernised, technologised and informed yet even more primitively prejudiced and contemptuous. Advanced education, sophisticated technology, modern science and later day philosophy do not seem to be able to totally deal with the hateful and violent beast inside all of us.
In a powerful sort of way modern communication technologies and social media in their efficiency seem to have given more oxygen and energy to prejudice, hate and the public expression of it. The social media have in many ways mediated in the expression and amplification of anti-social behaviours.
Communication and dialogue which are human and social technologies that are expected to be an alternative to conflict and animosity seem to be the fuel that powers the fires of anger and hate.
At the time when Allport wrote his classic book the world was haunted by hostile and contesting ideologies of the East and the West.
The Muslims were vigorously suspicious of those that were not Muslims and Jews had escaped annihilation in Central Europe only to encounter anti-Semitism around the State of Israel that was formed in 1948.
The people of colour and blacks in particular were the dark and unwanted peoples of the globe that were bearing the brunt of prejudice and punishment at a world scale. New prejudices have come to the fore with Israelis dispensing a new apartheid towards Palestinians, blacks suffering new oppressions in North America and Europe at large.
In Africa xenophobias and re-charged tribalisms and ethnic genocides climaxed in Rwanda, 1994, at the same time when apartheid feigned suicide in South Africa.
Women have come under intense patriarchy and sexism in a world that is truly owned and ruled by men. People living with disabilities have become more marginalised, excluded and peripherised in mainstream life in the economies and polities of the world. Young people and the elderly have also been, socially and systematically, made to know and feel their vulnerability.
Prejudice works by criminalising and punishing difference. Religious differences, in particular, have led to wars in the world. One can observe that prejudice and the bigoted pride that goes with it is a principal plank of coloniality at a world scale.
Most dominations, oppressions and exploitations of one by the other in the modern colonial world order are based on and justified by prejudicial reason.
More serious is that prejudice, like Lucifer himself, hides in the most unexpected people, places and institutions. It is found in churches, sports and universities, and it can be caught hiding in national policy documents and constitutions, disguised as rules, laws, regulations and policy.
What fundamentally is Prejudice?
The English essayist and poet, Charles Lamb was strong enough to look his own prejudice in the eye and say: “I am in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices — made up of likings and dislikings.” In so many ways, small and big, all of us are moving bundles of prejudices, loves and hates. It all looks perfectly natural that we should like some things and not others. There is no doubt; however, that it is equally natural that human beings from birth to death all want to love and be loved as part of being in the world in time and place. Studies in sociology and psychology, including that of Allport, have proven that children are born without prejudice but are eventually socialised into racism, tribalism, xenophobia and sexism by the families and societies around them. So prejudice is taught and learnt and it becomes normalised and naturalised.
The question can be asked if human beings are by nature good but are corrupted by civilisation or the lack of it. Is human nature an essentially good nature?
Allport describes how in the South Africa of the 1950s and 1940s the English were against the Afrikaner, both were agreed on the contempt for Jews, all three opposed the rights of Indians, and all four conspired against the native black people of the land. In that way, prejudices are not only normalised and naturalised but also very easily become a network of intertwined cliques and conspiracies.
People very easily see how they are oppressed by prejudice but are blind to how they are prejudiced against others.
For instance I am very clear about the problem of my being a black man in a white world yet it does not take any sleep from my eyes that I am a man in a world where women suffer the prejudice and violence of patriarchy and sexism, and I may find myself laughing at and enjoying sexist jokes that are hate crimes against womanity, and humanity ultimately.
The word prejudice originates from the ancient term praejudicium that referred to judgment based on previous or precedent experience.
The English word prejudice however, has come to describe “thinking ill of others without sufficient warrant.” In that way prejudice is in actuality irrational prejudgment of things and people which is part of an irrational nature of human beings. We so frequently never require evidence or reason to judge, label and hate others. Prejudice does not only work in the negative, it also works in the positive where human beings are not only prejudiced against others but are also prejudiced for others. Blind favouritism and support and love for some people without rational and reasoned cause becomes prejudice and has discriminatory effects on those that are not favoured.
How Does Prejudice Work? Sociologists and psychologists, philosophers too, have pondered how human inequalities and animosities originated and play out in societies. Prejudice, to start with, does not call itself prejudice or does it announce its arrival. Racists, tribalists, xenophobes, sexists and other bigots will die denying that they are such. Oppression does not know itself nor does it see its work.
For instance, some xenophobes in South Africa see themselves as good nationalists and patriots that are duty-bound to protect the motherland from pollution by dirty and criminal foreigners. Most sexists and patriarchs see themselves as self-respecting men that are protecting biblical, cultural and traditional values by ensuring that women remain fearful and respectful of men.
The Anti-Defamation of League, a Jewish organisation in the United States of America that watched against anti-Semitism developed what they called the Pyramid of Hate to show how simple day to day little talk, jokes and banter that are prejudicial, can grow and lead to genocides and holocausts.
For the reason that the Anti-Defamation League watched against anti-Semitism that threatened Jews and forgot to watch their own Zionism that threatened Palestinians and non-Jews in the world I elect to abandon the Pyramid of Hate as a good illustration of how prejudice works, it is a tainted concept. I choose to give Gordon Allport’s concept of how prejudice is “acted out” epistemic privilege because of its decoloniality and ability to force thinkers to examine their own prejudices before they describe that of others.
That Harmless Little Talk Antilocution is that way in which as human beings we make otherwise harmless talk and jokes about other groups of people and individuals. These little jokes might be laughable but they contain and transmit messages and images of hate. They might not be easily classified as hate speech or derogatory speech but they are forceful in making imaginary inferiority and negativity of other people look real, and justify why they should be hated, not be taken seriously or excluded from political and economic opportunities.
In South Africa there are so many otherwise harmless jokes about foreigners that become monstrous when they become usable as beliefs that scaffold the logic of xenophobic attacks. There is most times no joke at all in some jokes. The rhetoric of jokes might be comic but their logic truly genocidal.
Avoidance
When those small little jokes are internalised and believed, consciously and unconsciously, people may start avoiding those foreigners, those women or those members of that race or tribe that have been joked about as fools or dirty beasts. Avoidance easily leads to discrimination, exclusion and marginalisation of one by the other on grounds that may have begun as jokes but have morphed into unwritten social rules that we come to live by. Stereotypes are social constructions, fictions and myths, which have a way of growing into monsters. One can argue here that we need to be careful of the small jokes that we imagine and make about others because they can give birth to monsters.
Discrimination
When opportunities and resources begin to be distributed along the lines of hate and love, like and dislike, prejudice has taken root. When familiarities and relations in terms of skin colour, gender, tribe, nationality, religion and village origins become working networks by which we are admitted to schools, treated in hospitals, given or not given jobs, prejudice has come to life among us.
Prejudice is a powerful sociological and psychological framework that can bind our minds, blind our eyes and deafen our ears to the truth and we begin to believe myths and fictions about other people as truths. Discrimination, as evil as it is, begins to make perfect sense even to the brightest people around town, if their senses have been dulled by prejudice and its cousin, malice.
Subtle Aggression
Once prejudice has found a home in our hearts and minds it resists being expelled. We tend to become defensive of our prejudice and find bright reasons to defend and justify the discrimination of others. We vigorously defend our prejudicial actions as legal, professional, sensible and dismiss criticism as itself prejudicial and discriminatory.
It takes extra-ordinary intelligence and moral sensibility to look one’s prejudice in the eye and admit it; and it takes genius to commit to abandoning one’s own prejudice and discrimination of others because prejudice and discrimination pay well and offer many social and political rewards and advantages to their perpetrators. It is for that reason that the giving away of social privileges is seen as one of the highest forms of decolonial and liberatory actions in social justice work.
Physical Attack and Extermination Combined, those little jokes about others, the avoidance of them, their discrimination, and the subtle and defensive aggression towards them grow into an emotional, psychological and physical readiness to do something about them, once and for all. That is how World War II, Rwanda and Bosnian genocides came by. Prejudice grows from jokes to physical extermination of one by the other. It is a toxic human poison found in each one of us in different levels and types, and pointed towards different directions of other people.
Is there self-Prejudice?
Yes. When we have internalised and believed the jokes and insults that have been said about our skin colour, tribe, nationality, religion, gender, age and otherwise we develop an inferiority complex. We hate ourselves and begin to accept that it is natural that we are second class and second-hand people. We literally die inside and resign to our marginality. Prejudice is not just evil but it is satanism itself, it poisons the world and kills humanity.