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Civil rights and race relations materials, 1957-1964

What You Can Do About Racial Prejudice In Housing Page 9

Far from being a natural condition of mankind, racial prejudice as we know it today is of fairly recent historical origin. Its appearance coincided with the beginning of modern colonialism. Colonizing powers rationalized the exploitation of native peoples, first, on the basis of their infidelism and, secondly, on the premise that they were basically inferior to whites and were therefore something less than completely human. This latter theory became the rationalization for slavery and, arriving in America with the first shipload of slaves, it became the root of the concept of white supremacy in the New World.
The theories and rationalization that are used by many people to justify their feelings of prejudice can all be easily disproved by facts--without, however, removing the prejudice itself. This indicates that prejudice, as it relates to Negroes, is somewhat different from other kinds of opinions people have. What makes prejudice so different and so difficult to deal with, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, is the fact that racial prejudice is not a rationally held idea.[1] It is an irrational and emotional opinion which has little relation to fact or experience. In truth, the more limited a prejudiced person's contact with Negroes (except on a master-servant basis), the more strongly held are his prejudiced ideas!
The most important consequence of this non-rational basis for prejudice is this: You cannot deal with problems of prejudice on an entirely rational basis. Rational arguments alone do not change a prejudiced person's opinions, though they may remove the supports with which he rationalizes his position and thus disarm him sufficiently to allow some progress to be made.
What, then, is the basis for prejudice? Why do so many people cling to prejudiced ideas about others?
Prejudice almost always appears to be the use of some group of people as a scapegoat--a way to hate in others the inadequacies we feel in ourselves; a way to insure our own social status and identity by making certain there is always some group permanently below us on the social
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Far from being a natural condition of mankind, racial prejudice as we know it today is of fairly recent historical origin. Its appearance coincided with the beginning of modern colonialism. Colonizing powers rationalized the exploitation of native peoples, first, on the basis of their infidelism and, secondly, on the premise that they were basically inferior to whites and were therefore something less than completely human. This latter theory became the rationalization for slavery and, arriving in America with the first shipload of slaves, it became the root of the concept of white supremacy in the New World. The theories and rationalization that are used by many people to justify their feelings of prejudice can all be easily disproved by facts--without, however, removing the prejudice itself. This indicates that prejudice, as it relates to Negroes, is somewhat different from other kinds of opinions people have. What makes prejudice so different and so difficult to deal with, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, is the fact that racial prejudice is not a rationally held idea.[1] It is an irrational and emotional opinion which has little relation to fact or experience. In truth, the more limited a prejudiced person's contact with Negroes (except on a master-servant basis), the more strongly held are his prejudiced ideas! The most important consequence of this non-rational basis for prejudice is this: You cannot deal with problems of prejudice on an entirely rational basis. Rational arguments alone do not change a prejudiced person's opinions, though they may remove the supports with which he rationalizes his position and thus disarm him sufficiently to allow some progress to be made. What, then, is the basis for prejudice? Why do so many people cling to prejudiced ideas about others? Prejudice almost always appears to be the use of some group of people as a scapegoat--a way to hate in others the inadequacies we feel in ourselves; a way to insure our own social status and identity by making certain there is always some group permanently below us on the social 9