"One of the first times I remember coming across prejudice was aged five in the playground at Loanhead Primary School in Kilmarnock. A girl called Fiona asked me, "Are you a Catholic or a Protestant?" I replied, "My dad's Jewish.” Then she proceeded to show me round to the gates of the Catholic school where they were throwing stones at the Catholic children. I didn't join in. I wasn't brought up to hate Catholics.....
My mother certainly did not bring me up to hate Catholics. She just hated… the Germans, the French, all potential husbands for me, except for farmers... When I was about 11 I was bullied all summer by a boy who kept on shouting "Jew" at me. I have felt discrimination from Jewish people and non-Jewish people because I was half Jewish. Because of this I had a bit of a religious identity crisis. Those days I just do my own things and try to be a good person. I try to avoid conflict. ...
When I worked in school the teachers said I should not be allowed to work with children as I might attack them because I told them I was schizophrenic. Because of our life experiences we can all have some kind of conscious or unconscious bias. You need to look inside and think why this might be. For example, I am probably very wary and against drug addicts and have no time for them, but that might be because I went out with an addict! However, I am more understanding of alcoholism.
Why would that be?" stated a thoughtful Mary Hamilton, a 50 year old carer from the Town of Campeltown in Scotland. Mary seems to have experienced the misfortune of bearing the brunt of many kinds of prejudice which surfaced in the form of name calling, bullying and being treated as a pariah by being excluded from entering the staff room of a school. Mary also tells how her friend Stephen also came across discrimination while growing up in Cumbernauld with his family. Mary stated, "He and his friends would get a tonne of verbal abuse on their way to the Catholic school because they were Catholics. Then abuse in the playing field and the other children wouldn't let him play football. He doesn't really like to talk about it as it was very cruel. He says it is a very “West Coast thing” all this sectarianism. They get it from their parents! "
Concerning religious sectarianism, many Scots themselves think that it is widespread. A common joke was that Glasgow was like Belfast without the troops. Another anecdote goes that when a bigot asks a man "Are you a Catholic or Protestant?" The man answers, "I am an atheist!" The bigot then asks him "Are you a Protestant or Catholic atheist?"
But is Scotland really such a sectarian country? Do the Scots hold such deep prejudices against people with different beliefs? The answer to those questions depends how you define prejudice, how widespread you believe it is and what the real impact of it is! But Steve Bruce, a professor of Sociology, claims it is largely a myth perpetuated by the media and widely held shared assumptions. He states, "The sectarianism of Scotland is a myth; popular in some places but a myth nonetheless. "He also states that there is just no comparison with Northern Ireland. For example, whereas only 6% of marriages are mixed in Northern Ireland, in Scotland over 50% of Catholics marry non-Catholics. Most Scots are not football fans never mind support Celtic or Rangers. Bruce believes that less than 1 percent of Scots have reported being victims of the sectarian incidents experienced by Mary Hamilton and Stephen. Perhaps a much more significant form of prejudice is based on your locality as well as social class. There is a lot of snobbery and inverted snobbery based on whether you are poor or affluent.
This begs the questions like 'What do we mean by prejudice? ' 'Are we all prejudiced in some way?' 'Is the word bias synonymous with prejudice ? ' 'Do we often use this word in a careless and indiscriminate way?'
In fact, the word conjures up numerous meanings. It can be a form of prejudging before having adequate facts about a situation, it can be simply errors about assessing a person or situation, a positive hypothesis used by a scientist before conducting an experiment, and lastly, a negative attitude towards a particular group of people based on perceived negative stereotypes. In the last case people are prejudiced against a whole group of people and can discriminate or abuse them. Nowadays people tend to focus on the last meaning.
According to Hans Georg Gadamer, the history of ideas showed that the word prejudice only acquired negative connotations with the coming of the 18th century Enlightenment. Before this, the word prejudice in the German language meant a provisional legal verdict before a final verdict. Such a provisional judgment could affect the final verdict adversely. The Latin word praejudicium means simply 'Adverse affect,’ ‘Disadvantage,’ ‘harm.’ The word prejudice did not mean false judgment but could be positive. But with the Enlightenment prejudice came to mean 'unfounded belief.'
A prejudiced person was one whose views were formed hastily or were based on tradition or authority. Anything not based on reason, such as some religions or superstition, could be viewed as 'prejudice'…
An absurd situation arose where the church accused the Enlightenment thinkers as being 'prejudiced' against them and vice versa! The Enlightenment thinkers claimed it was the church who had the strongest prejudices!
One of the currently widespread notions is to claim a person is 'unconsciously ' prejudiced and even 'racist.' This notion is based largely on a psychological word association test where a subject is shown some photos and asked to put positive or negative words to each picture. If a subject comes up with negative words with say, a photo of a particular group of people it implies he or she is 'prejudiced' or holds a bias against this group. But why should this be the case? The person who attributes negative things to the group might simply be honestly attributing what he correctly perceives is the really negative and adverse things this group is experiencing. {i.e. more poverty, more discrimination and higher arrest rates.} There may be no relation between the words that come up and a so called bias.
Does holding particular stereotypes of a group imply you are against this group? There is not always a necessary correlation between the two! So you can understand why people might be misled into overreacting and seeing prejudice where none actually exists. We should at least question the interpretation of some of those word association tests and the assumptions behind them.
Why is it that it is in the vested interests of people to spread strong prejudices against other groups? There is no doubt that some officials and politicians can divert attention from their own failings by blaming other people. A feeling of superiority over other people brings you an elated sense of power. Even the most impotent person feels flattered by reassuring himself that he is not as bad as the other group.
The German philosopher Nietzsche stated that 'a will to power' could be dangerous especially if it was based on a warped psychology of resentment and revenge. It boosts a person's ego to think that he is a winner in contrast to many people he perceives as 'losers.'
In the mainstream media, fanning the fuel of hatred can even boost your circulation and drive up profits. For some people being prejudiced is the price you pay for being accepted and integrated into the top dominant group...
Should they challenge such prejudices they can lose the friendship and being part of a social group.
So how might we at least begin to challenge at least the most dangerous prejudices such as racism and religious sectarianism? I suggest the following might help.
1. We need to teach philosophy in schools that encourages people to question everything. In some schools, some students are not allowed to ask the teacher questions because they are deemed 'wasting the time' of teachers or just distracting. In Britain you have 'an already know the answers in advance' rather than a philosophical culture where questioning is encouraged. One of the reasons why racism is so unchecked is that so many students assume 'prejudice' is 'a matter of common sense' or ' the natural and normal thing.' People should not be afraid to ask questions.
2. Diversity is a good thing. It would be boring if everyone was identical. So rather than seeing differences as a threat or source of dread we should derive joy from finding out about different people or cultures. Such a great learning experience enriches the lives of everyone. So rather than seeing the refugee or the migrant as 'taking something ' from our culture we should see them as on the contrary, a potential teacher and friend.
3. The psychologist Gordon Allport argued that friendly and continued contact between different groups lessened racial prejudice. The psychologist Thomas Pettigrew agreed and carried our research which vindicated Allport's views. He found that romances and strong friendships between groups decreased prejudices. So the “Romeo and Juliet effect” in cooling down conflict between rival clans or groups should not be underestimated. Pettigrew claimed that the higher level of racism in East Germany than in West Germany was due to the fact that in the former, African students were kept apart from the Germans. Pettigrew stated, "East Germans are on average far more prejudiced against all groups, from Poles to Turks, than are people in West Germany....For example, acts of violence against minorities are much more frequent in the former East Germany than West. When we studied those arrested for such violence, we found two things: they are intensely prejudiced, and they have virtually no contact with the groups they hate so much" {“Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships,” by Daniel Goleman, London: Arrow Books, 2007, p. 304.}
4. Just encouraging people from different social groups to work on a joint collaborative project at school can lessen the hostility between groups. For instance, you can ask different students to each contribute something to a narrative of the Second World War where each student provides an essential piece to an overall jigsaw puzzle picture of the war. This means the students can't finish the puzzle without the aid of other students. So the students learn to see each other not as rivals but co-workers. In the end, friendship is the winner.
5. Small acts of kindness performed between different groups can make a profound difference to relations. The main point should be to create strong emotional ties and bonds between groups.
6. If a person sees a racist verbally abusing and taunting another person intervenes to stop this it can make a difference in discouraging such acts. This was shown by the example when an impostor called Brandon Lee who was at Bearsden academy intervened to stop people pupils from abusing one student and came up to try and persuade the abusers to see things differently. His intervention made a profound impression. The more people turn a blind eye to such acts, the more acceptable abusing seems to appear.
Some recommended reading:
1. “Truth and Method,” by Hans Georg Gadamer, London & New York: Bloomsbury, 2013. This is heavy going, but Gadamer really explores what it means to be bias and how we can take a more open minded approach to interpreting a text in literature or history.
2. “Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships,” London: Arrow Books, 2006. This text explores some constructive ways people can take to counter strong social prejudices. This is a very readable and accessible book.
3. “After Virtue,” by Alasdair MacIntyre, London: Duckworth, 2004 edition. MacIntyre describes how we have been moving to a society based on a non-philosophical culture where people are becoming less and less questioning. There is less real debate and discourse between people because they base their beliefs on firm convictions.
4. “Sectarianism in Scotland,” by Steve Bruce, Tony Glendenning, Iain Paterson, and Michael Rosie, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. This work of sociology challenges the prevailing and widespread belief that most Scots are sectarian. Nevertheless, we cannot completely discount it the level of sectarianism is often overstated as this research proves.