There are many theories that attempt to identify the precise origins of racism. The three articles that were designated for reading each try to answer the question of what are the sources of racism. Of the three, I found that both Loewenberg?s and Allport?s arguments combined best explain where racism stems from. By using the aforementioned articles I will assert my opinion of the subject, and use past and current class readings to support my argument. In doing so, some light may be shed upon what are the actual derivations of racism.
In Allport?s article, Formation of In-Groups, there is a social psychological approach taken. He uses in-groups and reference groups to aid in his defining of the origins of racism. He defines an in-group as ?any cluster of people who can use the term ?we,? with the same significance. ? He then defines a reference group as ? in-groups that is warmly accepted, or a group in which the individual wishes to be included. ? By forming in-groups and reference groups, people are often segregated or discriminated against because they aren?t part of a whole.
Groups do so by forming a common enemy, which every group member can relate with each other in despising. Groups label out-groups in order to assure camaraderie among members and security. The existence of an outsider is in the beginning an essential condition of any warmth or togetherness within the group (Allport 99). Since whites are the dominant race in American society, being in the white in-group means having people of color as their common adversary. Feelings of prejudice arouse from the need of white people to feel comfortable with themselves and their surroundings.
This may mean that the in-group of whites was formed in order to satisfy the needs of individual whites. In-groups are often recreated to fit the needs of individual group members, and when the needs are strongly aggressive, the redefinition of the in-group may primarily be in terms of the hated out-groups (Allport 94). The hated out-group in terms of racial relations of whites is people of color. Reference groups sometimes have the same meaning as in-groups. This is mostly when the reference group accepts the individual.
An example of this is when a black wants to be part of the white majority, and isn?t able to because of his color and affiliation with the black in-group. This is brought on by the demand for people color to adapt to white culture. In doing so, people of color are forced to rid themselves of taking pride in their ethnicity and culture. By doing this, a person of color may develop self-hate for themselves as individual or for their group. The minority group member is forced to make the dominant majority his reference group in respect to language, manners, morals, and law.
He may be entirely loyal to his minority in-group, but he is at the same time always under the necessity of relating himself to the standards and expectations of the majority (Allport 95). The dominant majority is for him a reference group. It exerts a strong pull upon him, forcing attitudinal conformity. Thus, both in-groups and reference groups are important in the formation of attitudes (Allport 97). All humans have needs, and these needs can be satisfied by associating oneself with a group. The group can help gratify personal wants and needs for individuals as well as the group as a whole.
In joining a group to accomplish what is desired, a individual will has to adopt the values, beliefs, and customs as the group. All groups develop a way of living with characteristic codes and beliefs, standards, and enemies to suit their own adaptive needs . The theory holds that both gross and subtle pressures keep every individual in line. The in-groups preferences must be his, and its enemies his enemies (Allport 99). Thus an individual must be similar to those who form the in-group. Without similarity, a group can?t be strongly bonded together.
People still may develop their own views and prejudices, but these are usually shown and shared in the group which an individual is a member. No individual would mirror his groups attitudes unless he had a personal need, or personal habit, that leads him to do so. The most frequent source of prejudice lies in the needs and habits that reflect influence of in-group members upon the development of individual personality (Allport 99). I think this may help explain why children of racist or prejudice parents tend to mirror their parents own beliefs.
A child wouldn?t be racist if he don?t know what being racist was. Becoming socialized by parents sometimes includes the teaching of racism to children of racist parents. The same could go for groups of friends, who are in a predominantly white area. The group members feed each others need for security and identity. Allport indicated that we form groups for a sense of security. When the sense of security fades away, prejudices are created ignored to strengthen the bonds of membership and satisfy needs of security. Hostility towards out-groups helps strengthen our sense of belonging.
Because of their basic importance to our own survival and self-esteem, we tend to develop a partisanship and ethnocentrism in respect to our in-groups (Allport 100). By doing this we create barriers between groups. This barrier makes others foreign. These boundaries bring about racism and the discrimination of one group from the other. People don?t seem to like anything that is contradistinctive to their own ideals and characteristics. Thus, what is alien is regarded as somehow inferior, less ?good,? but there is not necessarily hostility against it (Allport 100).
Group members are able to protect the groups identity and strengthen itis may mean that the in-group of whites was formed in order to satisfy the needs of individual whites. In-groups are often recreated to fit the needs of individual group members, and when the needs are strongly aggressive, the redefinition of the in-group may primarily be in terms of the hated out-groups (Allport 94). The hated out-group in terms of racial relations of whites is people of color. Reference groups sometimes have the same meaning as in-groups. This is mostly when the reference group accepts the individual.
An example of this is when a black wants to be part of the white majority, and isn?t able to because of his color and affiliation with the black in-group. This is brought on by the demand for people color to adapt to white culture. In doing so, people of color are forced to rid themselves of taking pride in their ethnicity and culture. By doing this, a person of color may develop self-hate for themselves as individual or for their group. The minority group member is forced to make the dominant majority his reference group in respect to language, manners, morals, and law.
He may be entirely loyal to his minority in-group, but he is at the same time always under the necessity of relating himself to the standards and expectations of the majority (Allport 95). The dominant majority is for him a reference group. It exerts a strong pull upon him, forcing attitudinal conformity. Thus, both in-groups and reference groups are important in the formation of attitudes (Allport 97). All humans have needs, and these needs can be satisfied by associating oneself with a group. The group can help gratify personal wants and needs for individuals as well as the group as a whole.
In joining a group to accomplish what is desired, a individual will has to adopt the values, beliefs, and customs as the group. All groups develop a way of living with characteristic codes and beliefs, standards, and enemies to suit their own adaptive needs . The theory holds that both gross and subtle pressures keep every individual in line. The in-groups preferences must be his, and its enemies his enemies (Allport 99). Thus an individual must be similar to those who form the in-group. Without similarity, a group can?t be strongly bonded together. People still mareal source.
People use these two concepts to take the focus of themselves. They posit negative characteristics on others to remove the guilt that they feel. When forbidden desires emerge in a white man, he can facilitate their repression by projecting them onto blacks or members of other racial minorities. In the unconscious of the bigot the black represents his own repressed instincts which he fears and hates and which are forbidden by his conscience as it struggles to conform to the values professed by society (Loewenberg 114). Fear of revenge by oppressed groups is common among racial bigot.
They fear that the oppressed will retaliate and do onto them as they have done onto the oppressed. Whites fear begin put in the same place that they positioned people of color for years. The process of projection becomes dangerous to the bigot when he perceives that he is hated as the exploiter and oppressor and that he must fear the revenge of blacks. Bigoted whites cannot imagine blacks who are not vengeful because they identify productively with the targets of their prejudice and they know how revengeful they themselves would be in similar circumstances (Loewenberg 115). Projection agrees with and is complementary to displacement.
Frustration caused anger that could not effectively or immediately be directed at an abstract social and economic system, and that this hostility was instead discharged by being displaced onto blacks (Loewenberg 116). This can help explain why blacks are looked down upon. They are blamed for the mishaps of whites. Whites blame people of color because of their insecurity. They can?t take the blame themselves, so they posit it onto others. Like Allport, Loewenberg states that feelings of personal insecurity, deprivation, anxiety, and hostility are all linked to prejudice (Loewenberg 119).
These feelings lead to the use of false information to identify people of color. An individuals needs are expressed by his prejudicial attitudes. The prejudiced person needs hate to maintain feelings of selfhood (Loewenberg 120). This is very similar to Allports statement that we form hatred of out-groups to preserve feelings of security. Loewenberg states that anxiety plays a role in forming prejudices. The greater the underlying anxiety of a person, the more prejudiced he is, because the pressure of his anxiety weakens his personal controls.
Thus weakened, he seeks relief through prejudice, which serves to reduce anxiety because prejudice facilitates the discharge of hostility. Thus prejudice can help a person protect his individuality and maintain the emotional balance of a distorted personality (Loewenberg 120). Prejudice helps individuals function better in society. It satisfies their needs of a strong sense of ethnicity, sexual orientation, social status, personal identity, emotional strength, and personal control. By acting prejudicially, people gain control over their instinctual forces.
It also lets a person feel better about themselves. This argument is similar to that of Cherrie Moraga?s La Guera. She states that it is not really difference that the oppressor fears so much as similarity. He fears he will discover n himself if the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has *censored*ted on. He fears the immobilization threatened by his own incipient guilt. He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different. He fears the hatred, anger, and vengeance of those he has hurt (Moraga 32).
Loewenberg is similar in the way that they both mention how whites fear similarities with people of color, guilt of oppressing, and fear of retaliation. In the article Oppression, Marilyn Frye states how displacement and projection are used in real life. She mentions how minorities are perceived by the majority, and how those perceptions affect the way people of color are treated by whites. Loewenbergs argument is very attractive. I think it carries a lot of weight. It only takes common sense to see that people give undesirable characteristics and actions to others.
People don?t like to be in relation with something negative. The article clearly illustrates how people only want positive characteristics attributed to them. The third and final argument was made by James Boggs? in the article, Uprooting Racism and Racists in the United States. Boggs doesn?t use a psychological and/ or sociological explanations to discover the origins of racism. He states that racism is the result of historical and cultural forces that have provided racism with an easy mode of travel through the years. He mentions that systematic racism didn?t exist before the rise of capitalism.
Slave oppression had always existed in earlier times, but this was usually on the basis of military conquest and the conquerors did not develop a theory of racial superiority to rationalize their right to exploit their slaves (Boggs 138). He also contends that the slave trade brought about feelings of superiority and inferiority. It assigned people roles which would shape the way in which people of color were viewed for many years to follow. Boggs wrote that African culture was erased during the slave trade era. Whites told themselves that blacks had no culture to begin with so they weren?t doing anything wrong.
They tell themselves that in order to cancel the guilt they feel from holding people captive against their will. The more instrumental the slave trade in destroying African culture, the more those involved directly and indirectly in the slave traffic tried to convince themselves and others that there had never been any African culture in the first place. Thus, step by step, in order to justify their mutually reinforcing economic exploitation and forceful subjugation of blacks, living, breathing white Americans created a scientifically cloaked theory of white superiority and black inferiority (Boggs 139).
This is very similar to Loewenberg?s argument in the way that whites told themselves that there was no African culture to erase the guilt that would have been felt if they were conscious of what they were doing. During the times of slavery in the United States, people had a lot of money tied up in slavery and they didn?t want to lose there investments. Racism served as a catalyst. Racism was real because there were real people with a stake in racism- racists- and these real people were ready to resort to force to protect their stake (Boggs 141).
Because slavery was a means of income, whites used racism to put blacks down. In doing so, they took all ambition and drive away from black people. Since they had all of the power, their views were seen as truth. This argument isn?t as affective as the other articles, yet is still informative. I think that racism was aro, sexual orientation, social status, personal identity, emotional strength, and personal control. By acting prejudicially, people gain control over their instinctual forces. It also lets a person feel better about themselves. This argument is similar to that of Cherrie Moraga?s La Guera.
She states that it is not really difference that the oppressor fears so much as similarity. He fears he will discover n himself if the same aches, the same longings as those of the people he has *censored*ted on. He fears the immobilization threatened by his own incipient guilt. He fears he will have to change his life once he has seen himself in the bodies of the people he has called different. He fears the hatred, anger, and vengeance of those he has hurt (Moraga 32). Loewenberg is similar in the way that they both mention how whites fear similarities with people of color, guilt of oppressing, and fear of retaliation.
In the article Oppression, Marilyn Frye states how displacement and projection are used in real life. She mentions how minorities are perceived by the majority, and how those perceptions affect the way people of color are treated by whites. Loewenbergs argument is very attractive. I think it carries a lot of weight. It only takes common sense to see tpitalism, people of color have to struggle just to obtain an occupation, which is predominately held by whites. In A Different Mirror, Donald Takiki takes a very similar approach to that of Boggs.
The both use historical context to explain racism and how we can rid our society of it. Boggs? argument isn?t coherent with any of the other articles. He doesn?t address the problem in the same way as Allport and Loewenberg. The other two have few similarities which make one argument complement the other. I think that without in-groups and reference groups, people would have a need to displace negative aspects about people onto others. By assigning an out-group, people create an enemy that they can assign negative characteristics to.
This takes the negative characteristics and actions off of themselves, so that they can feel better about themselves and their group. This is yet another correspondence between the two authors. Both believe that prejudice arises from the need of an individual to satisfy his personal needs, which may be security, ethnocentrism and/ or release of guilt. They also state that we need hate to keep ourselves in line. Hostility towards others seems to make our emotional and group ties stronger. They are also alike in the way they speak of women, also.
The two of these arthors are very influential and persuasive in their respective articles, yet with the two combined, the origins of racism would be much easier to comprehend. Combining the two would only make the argument stronger and more concrete. Boggs? argument has truth in it, but it isn?t as practicable as the other two. His argument is coherent with the other two in the way that he describes how whites dominated blacks and how the assigned them roles and attributes that are false or are more applicable to whites. Slavery deeply segregated our society into groups.
Whites being the in-group and blacks being the hated out-group. Since whites were the majority they had their way with blacks, by either murder, rape, or taking their livelihood away. Then they decided to assign these tasks to black and began labeling them as what the whites were at the outset of slavery. It seems as if all of the articles, if put together explain what the sources of racism are. By placing them together we have a clearer picture of how racism has polluted our nation and the minds of its citizens. Racism has been around for hundreds of years.
It didn?t always deal with race relations either. It was dealt with sex relations and people from different cultures. Being white skinned didn?t make a difference as long as you weren?t part of the group. Ethnocentrism and need to satisfy wants and needs lead to racism. It helped people justify their actions and their beliefs. It helps people come together. Only by looking at the three articles can one person really identify the source of racism. One argument may address the beginning while the others address the end. Only on a complementary basis can these arguments define the source of racism accurately.
