C. P Ellis in his memoir, accounts his times as reputed member of Ku Klax Klan and through series of experiences, the change in his perception towards people of color. His prejudices against the black people came not inherently but from his childhood struggles that led to frustrations in his adult life and already present social biases against the blacks. Vincent N. Parrillo in his article “Causes of Prejudice” explains various theories of how one account for prejudices.
He proposes that we can understand more about prejudice among individuals by ocus-ing on four areas of study: levels of prejudice, self- justification, personality, and frustration. In his level of prejudice, he describes 3 levels of prejudice: the cognitive level, the emotional level and the action-oriented. He theorizes in cognitive level, the prejudice is encompassing a person’s beliefs and perceptions of a group as threatening or nonthreatening, inferior or equal in character.
The emotional level, however is when the individual personally feels connected to one of the spectrum of the classes through his/her personal involvement. This is more intense than the cognitive level. The most intense level of prejudice is however, the action-oriented level of prejudice where an individual act upon the perceived biases. Ellis goes through all the level of prejudices as put by Parillo. His early childhood experience and the later struggle in adult life plays a vital role in shaping his perceptions and forming prejudices.
He comes from a poor family which is evident from the clothes he wears to the house he lives in. He associates himself with being poor and hence forms in his mind an idea of ifferentiation in classes. This identification of being poor fills him up with shame and guilt. He also mentions that his relation with his father is of good one, though they never have deep and meaningful conversations. He disassociates himself from friends and feeling of economic inferiority later transforms his shame into frustration.
Hence, he reaches the first level of prejudice, i. . the cognitive one where the prejudice is formed in one’s mind. In the memoir, he talks about how he feels ashamed and inferior to his classmates because of his and his father’s poor lothing. This can be clearly seen as he writes in his memoir, “The other kids had nice clothes, and I just had what Daddy could buy. I still got some of those inferiority feelin’s now that I have to overcome once in a while. ” And later in adult life, he turns out no better than his father in terms of providing for his family and maintaining a respectable status in the society.
So, we can assume that this shame ingrained his mind passes the baton to the feeling of frustration. Ellis reaches the second level of prejudices, i. e. the emotional level when he finds himself in he inferior group. During this period of emotional level of prejudice, Ellis cuts himself out of the social interaction because it triggers shame and fear. He grows up to be bitter man whose view towards the world is negative. He believes he has been robbed off or cheated. He writes, “They say to abide by the law, go to church, do right and live for the Lord, and everything’ll work out.
But it didn’t work out. It just kept gettin’ worse and worse. “It can be understood here that he did not love his life and his conditions but of most of all, he didn’t like the feeling of nferiority. Ellis who like his father had a hard time taking care of the family and the 24/7 job at the gas station totally robbed him of a social as well as family life and here he transitioned to the third level of prejudice, i. e. action-orientated, where he began to display hatred towards black people.
As he couldn’t understand where and what went wrong, even when he lived by the law and Christian faith, worked hard all his life and still was struggle to make his family’s end meet. And hence, years of suppressed frustration were getting hard for him to contain within himself nd he had to find an outlet to vent all his anger, had blame someone for his hard knock life and so, he blame it on the people of color. And the society which was built up of majority of white people who held strong feeling of prejudice against the people of this race, made it easier for them to hate on them without any proper justification.
As Parillo describes the authoritarian personality, such as the parents who withdraw from love and having a domineering posture in their relations with a child which leads to the child having displaced aggression once he/she grows up. Even though Ellis in his memoir never reveals if his father was abusive or authoritative, but he does mentions that he was an alcoholic. This ground can be used to portray that Ellis father might have been authoritative to Ellis which would only fuel up his already built furstation.
Ellis finally joins the clan and here he meets the likes of him, those who had passed through all or few of the levels of prejudices as described by Parillo. Most of the Klan members were frustrated from the system, their life and had suffered from inferiority complex and were low-income whites. The Klan basically gave them a feeling of belonging and a union where they could vent their frustration and brag about them being the supreme whites of the society and the blacks inferior to them.
And on Ellis’s part, once in life he felt like he belong somewhere and part of something big and that he was wanted and important, led him to be an active member of the Klan and soon he went from member to chaplain and from chaplain to vice-president and ultimately the president. While Ellis life was changing after joining the KKK, another change was occurring the society. The black citizens ere raising their voices for their rights and getting out on the street and stepping in the whites only zone. The breeze of revolution, of social change was flowing throughout the country.
Ellis and the KKK had to do something to silence these shouts for equality of race in their city and with the support of some top level authorities had succeed in some of their expedition. But some of his experience like, when one of the city council member with whom Ellis had talked over on the phone the previous night as well as had been invited over at his place a few time ignored while crossing through the street. These kind of experiences got him to think if everything the Klan was doing worth the fight.
Ellis started to have restless nights as he started to question his involved in the Klan and the protests against the Blacks. He started to realize and see much clearer picture of what was really going on and that it wasn’t just about being black and white but more about the green and maintaining the power. And later, through the series of event, Ellis had to work with a particular Black woman whom he hated with “Purple Passion”, as co-chairpersons at the school committee to solve racial problems.
