Text. People Aren’t Born Prejudiced

The essay examines the general problem of racial prejudice in all its forms. The author announces his thesis in the title and then goes on to explain the sources from which prejudice springs and the manner in which it develops. Не concludes by emphasizing the key role, that education сап play in eliminating prejudice.

As you read, note the organizational pattern and the clearly marked transitions.

(1) What is prejudice? Its characteristics and origins have by now been carefully studied by psychologists and sociologists sothat today we know a good deal about how it is transmitted from one person to another.

(2) Prejudice is а false generalization about а group of people - or things - which is held onto despite all facts to the contrary. Some generalizations, of course, are true and useful - often needed to put people and things into categories. The statement that Negroes have darkly pigmented skin and nearly always curly hair isn’t а prejudice but a correct generalization about Negroes.

(3) Ignorance isn’t the same аs prejudice, either. Many people believe that Negroes are basically less intelligent than white people because they’ve heard this and never have been told otherwise. These people would be prejudiced only if they persisted in this belief after they knew the facts. Well-documented studies show that when Negroes and whites are properly matched in comparable groups, they have the same intelligence.

(4) Prejudiced thinking is rarely, probably never, confined to any one subject. Those prejudiced against one group of people аге nearly always prejudiced against others. Prejudice, then, could be said to be а disorder of thinking: а prejudiced person makes faulty generalizations by applying to а whole group what he has learned fгоm one or a few of its members. Sometimes, he doesn’t even draw on his own experience but bases his attitudes on what he has heard from others. Then he behaves toward а whole group as if there were no individual differences among its members. Few people would throw out a whole box of strawberries because theу found one or two bad berries at the top - yet this is the way prejudiced people think and act.

(5) There аre different kinds of prejudice and two of these deserve separate considerаton. First there is that loosely spoken, loosely held opinion that can be called conforming prejudice: people make prejudiced remarks about other races, nations, religions or groups because they want to conform to what they think аге the conventions of their own group. Attacking or deriding members of another group who “don’t belong” gives them а sense of solidarity with their own group. It's rather sad but also fortunate that most prejudice is probably this conforming kind. Fortunate, because this type of prejudice is easily given up when a new situation demands it.

(6) А number of studies have shown that while people may protest about some social change, when the change actually takes place most will fall silently and willingly into line. It’s the rare examples of change being resisted with violence that unfortunately receive most publicity. A psychologist interested in this phenomenon once made an аmusing study of the differences between what people say they’ll do and what they really do in а particular situаtiоn that evokes prejudice. Traveling across the country with а Chinese couple, be found that the three of them were received in 250 hotels and restaurants with great hospitality - and only once were refused service. When the trip was over, he wrote to each of the hotels and restaurants and asked if they would serve Chinese people. Ninety-two percent of those who had actually served them said they would not do so!

(7) Тhe second kind of prejudice is less easily relinquished than the conforming type, for this second kind stems from а more deep-rooted sense of personal insecurity. А prejudiced person of this kind usually has а feeling of failure or guilt about his own accomplishments and, to avoid the pain of blaming himself, he turns the blame on others. Just аs the Jews once symbolically piled all their guilt on а goat and drove it into the wilderness, so these prejudiced people make scapegoats out of Negroes, Southerners, Jews, Russians or whoever else fits their need. Moreover, insecure people like these аrе anxious, too, and anxious people can’t discriminate among the small but important differences between people who seem alike. So, on the one hand they often can't think clearly about other people; and on the other, they need to blame scapegoats in order to feel more comfortable. Both these mechanisms promote faulty generalizations; these people respond to others not as individuals but as Negroes, Russians, women, doctors - as if these groups were all alike.

(8) The first important point about how children learn prejudice is that they do. They aren’t born that way, though some people think prejudice is innate and like to quote the old saying, “You can’t change the human nature.” But yоu can change it. We now know that very small children are free of prejudice. Studies of school children have shown that prejudice is slight оr absent among children in the first and second grades. It increases thereafter, building to а peak usually among children in the fourth and fifth grades. After this, it may fall off again in adolescence. Other studies have shown that, on the average, young adults are much freer of prejudice than older ones.

(9) In the early stages of picking up prejudice children mix it with ignorance, which, as I’ve said, should be distinguished from prejudice. А child, as he begins to study the world around him, tries to organize his experiences. Doing this, he begins to classify things and people and begins to form connections - or what psychologists call associations. Не needs to do this because he saves time and effort by putting things and people into categories. But unless he classifies correctly, his categories will mislead rather than guide him. For example, if а child learns that “all fires аге hot and dangerous,” fires have been put firmly into the category оf things to be watched carеfully - and thus he can save himself from harm. But if he learns а category like “Negroes are lazy” or “foreigners are fools,” he’s learned generalizations that mislead because they’re unreliable. The thing is that when we use categories, we need to remember the exceptions and differences, the individual variations that qualify the usefulness of all generalizations. Sоme fires, fоr example, аre hotter and more dangerous than others. If people had avoided all fires as dangerous, we would never have had central heating.

(10) Моrе importantly, we can ill afford to treat people of any given group as generally alike - even when it’s possible to make some accurate generalizations about them. So when а child first begins to group things together, it’s advisable that he learns differences as well as similarities. For example, basic among the distinctions he draws is the division into “good” and “bad” – which he makes largely on the grounds оf what his parents do and say about things and people. Thus, he may learn that dirt is “bad” because his mother washes him every time he gets dirty. By extension, seeing а Negro child, he might point to him and say, “Bad child,” fоr the Negro child's fасе is brown, hence unwashed and dirty and so, “bad.” We call this prelogical thinking, and all оf us go through this phase before we learn to think more effectively.

(11) But some people remain at this stage and never learn that things that seem alike, such as dirt and brown pigment, аге really quite different. Whether а child graduates from this stage to correct thinking or to prejudicial thinking depends to а great extent on his parents and teachers.

(12) Generally speaking, a child learns from his parents in two main ways. Each of these may contribute to his development either аs а prejudiced personality оr a tolerant one. First, а child learns а good deal by direct imitation of his parent. If parents reveal prejudiced attitudes, children will tend to imitate those attitudes. If а mother or father for example, tells а child, “I don’t want you playing with any colored children, they foster in their child’s growing mind the connection between “colored” and “bad” - and thus promote the growth оf prejudice. If instead of saying “colored children,” а mother says “nigger” in а derogatory tone of voice, this makes another harmful connection in а child’s mind. Even before he clearly knows to what the words Negro or “nigger” refer, he would know that these words mean something “bad” and hence indicate people for him to avoid. It may be that some colored children, like some white children, аre unsuitable playmates. But the prohibition should be made on the grounds of the particular reasons for this unsuitability, not on the basis of skin pigment.

(13) How parents actually behave toward members of other groups in the presence of their children influences children as much or more than what parents say about such people. Still, parents can and do communicate prejudices in subtle ways, by subtle remarks. For example, some parents take pride in belonging to a special group, lay stress on the child’s membership in that group, and consequently lead him to believe that other people are inferior because they’re outside this group. Sometimes parents are unaware that the pride they take in such membership in а special group can be an insidious form of prejudice against other groups. This isn’t always so, because often pride in belonging can be related to the genuine accomplishments of а group. But just as often, pride stems simply from thinking of the group as special and superior because of its selectivity, not because of its accomplishments. However, this kind of direct transmission of prejudice from parents to children is the conforming type, and so can usually be modified by later experience if the child comes into contact with other unprejudiced people or if he has the opportunity to get to know members of the group toward which he has had prejudiced attitudes. For example, during the Second World War and the Korean War, many white soldiers of both North and South fought with Negro troops; knowing Negroes as people, they lost their old prejudices.

(14) Unfortunately, however, parents tend to restrict their children’s experiences with different kinds of people, for fear that the children might be harmfully influenced. This naturally prevents the children from unlearning prejudices. Unfortunately these children who most need broadening and correcting experiences are often deprived of them.

(15) Parents promote prejudice in а second, more subtle and harmful way by their own treatment of their children. Studies of markedly prejudiced persons show that they usually come from families in which they were treated harshly, authoritatively and unfairly - in other words, they were themselves the objects of prejudice. This parental behavior promotes prejudice in the children - apart from their imitation of it - in two ways. First, if parents treat а child harshly and punish him unfairly, they are relating to the child in terms of power instead of love. Treated as if he were always bad, the child will respond to his parents as if they were always dangerous. Growing skilled in the quick detection of threats or possible injury, he becomes sensitive to danger, not only from parents but from other people as well. He makes quick judgments in order not to be caught unaware. Quick judgments are а facet of prejudiced thinking. An insecure and easily frightened person makes sweeping judgments about groups, finding it safer to treat the whole group as if it might be harmful to him. He thinks, often unconsciously and always incorrectly, that then he can never be hurt.

(16) Secondly, when parents relate to а child in terms of power, when they punish him, say, with equal severity for accidentally knocking over а dish or for biting his baby brother, he not only thinks of his parents as dangerous people but he thinks of himself as dangerous, too. He must be bad, otherwise why would he be punished so often? Given this low opinion of himself, he will often try to raise it by putting the blame on others - using the old unconscious scapegoat mechanism. Here again, psychological studies have shown that people who are able to blame themselves when they’re responsible for things going wrong tend to be much less prejudiced than people who blame others when things go wrong. But а child can only learn to accept blame fairly if his parents attribute blame fairly to him. If he is blamed for everything, he may - in his own defense – grow up unable to accept the blame for anything. If he cannot blame himself he has to blame others – he has to see them as more deficient and blameworthy than they are – which means making prejudiced judgments about them.

(17) School can help undo the damage. Actual personal experience with children of other groups can show а child directly, immediately and concretely that not all members of a group are blameworthy, stupid, dirty or dishonest. In addition, unprejudiced teachers can instruct children in the ways of clear thinking that underlie tolerance. There is definite evidence that education reduces prejudices. It’s been found, for example, that college graduates are less prejudiced on the whole than people with less education. Direct instructions about different groups and cultures, another study shows, reduced prejudice in those who were taught.

(18) Fortunately, we seem today to be making progress in the direction of less prejudiced belief and behavior. Today, parents treat children with greater respect for them as individuals - in short, with less prejudice. This will continue to exert а healthy influence on the next generation. In fact, one survey has shown that it already has! College students of our generation, it demonstrates, are less prejudiced than college students of the last generation.

(19) But since prejudice against members of а minority group or the peoples of other countries is а luxury we can increasingly ill afford - no parent should relax his vigilance in guarding against sowing the seeds of intolerance.

NOTES

1. Fall into line – соглашаться (охотно и безоговорочно), подчиняться;

2. receive publicity – получить широкую известность/огласку;

3. ill afford – едва ли можно себе позволить;

4. by extension – как само собой разумеющееся;

5. a derogatory tone – пренебрежительный тон;

6. an insidious form – скрытаяформа;

7. be caught unaware – быть застигнутым врасплох;

8. a facet – грань, аспект;

9. undo the damage – возместить ущерб;

10. vigilance – бдительность

ACTIVE VOCABULARY

1. attitude (n) - позиция, отношение, точка зрения, настрой, социальная установка

positive/friendly/careful/negative/low~to/towards–положительное/дружеское/бережное/отрицательное/неуважительное отношение к

~ of mind – настроение, настрой

social ~s – социальные установки, ориентации

assume/take an ~- занять позицию, придерживаться позиции

2. judge (v) – судить, оценивать, считать, полагать, составить мнение

~ by appearances/actions – судить по внешности/делам

~ harshly/objectively – судить строго/объективно

As far as I can ~ - насколько я могу судить

judgment (n) – мнение, взгляд, суждение, рассудительность

pass ~ on – судить, критиковать, выносить приговор

sound ~ - здравый смысл

against your better ~ - вопреки здравому смыслу(голосу разума)

3. experience (v) – испытывать, знать по опыту, пережить

~ bitterness of /problems/difficulties – познать горечь/столкнуться с проблемами/трудностями

~ joy/pain/grief – испытывать радость/чувствовать боль/переживать горе

~ one’s kindness/cruelty – испытать на себе чью-л. доброту/жестокость

experience (n)–опыт, испытания, переживания

know/learn by ~ - знать из опыта/учиться на опыте

as ~ has shown–как показал опыт

gain ~ - набираться опыта

4. treat (v) – относиться, обращаться, обходиться

~ with respect/contempt/deference – относиться с уважением/презрением/почтением

~ like dirt/a dog–плохо обращаться

~ a question– рассматривать вопрос

~ lightly–не придавать значения, недооценивать

treatment (n) – отношение, обращение; лечение

special/preferential ~ - особое отношение/привилегированный режим

humiliating/unfair ~ - оскорбительное, унизительное/несправедливое отношение

equal ~ of – равное отношение к

5. prejudice (n)–предвзятое мнение, предубеждение, предрассудок

have/hold~ against–иметь предубеждение против

to the ~ of – в ущерб чему-либо

ingrained/innate ~s - укоренившиеся/врожденные предрассудки

face/overcome/communicate/combat ~s – сталкиваться/преодолевать/распространять предрассудки/бороться с предрассудками

without ~ to – без ущерба для

learn/pickup/lose ~(s) – перенимать предрассудки/становиться предвзятым/освобождаться от предрассудков

prejudice (v)–создавать предвзятое мнение, наносить ущерб, причинять вред

~ against – настроить к-л. против

~ the interests of – ущемлять интересы/вредить интересам

~ ed attitude/thinking/judgments – предвзятое отношение/мнение/суждения

I. GRAMMAR EXERCISES