Читать книгу Understanding Racism - Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl - Страница 25

A critical component of prejudice is the solidification of one’s in-group and the creation of out-groups. A group is “any cluster of people who can use the term ‘we’ with the same significance.”¹⁶ An in-group is the group of one’s primary membership and belonging, and an out-group consists of those who do not belong to the in-group. Membership in an in-group is based on the needs of the individuals in the group, and it is possible to have concentric in-groups, such as family, neighborhood, city, state, and nation. In this sense, belonging to a nation does not negate a simultaneous membership in one’s family. A particular type of in-group is a reference group, or the group that one “refers to” in guiding personal behavior and aspirations.

In the case of race and prejudice, in-groups and out-groups serve as organizing tools. It is assumed that all the individual members of a group have the characteristics of that group—for instance, beliefs that all Blacks are prone to violence or that all Jewish people are penny-pinching. Such beliefs about out-groups may be rooted in a “kernel of truth,” in that some individuals may have these traits, but prejudice is feelings of difference about a whole group, even when these feelings are imaginary.¹⁷ As Allport states, “there is probably not a single instance where every member of a group has all the characteristics ascribed to his group, nor is there a single characteristic that is typical of every single member of one group and of no other group.”¹⁸ Moreover, no person knows every member of a group, so “any negative judgment of these groups as a whole is, strictly speaking, an instance of thinking ill without sufficient warrant.”¹⁹ In other words, beliefs about individuals because of their group membership result in prejudice based on irrational bias rather than rational, logical thought.

A group can also assert itself as the primary group. Whites proclaim themselves as the dominant reference group for all races and thereby assume that people of color should aspire to White norms. When Whites perceive themselves to be threatened by people of color, the White in-group becomes heavily solidified, and Whites construct people of color as inferior. If the needs of Whites become strongly aggressive, their definition of themselves is formed in relation to the hatred of out-groups—that is, people of color.