The Face of Prejudice

“Drive out prejudices through the door, and they will return through the window.”​—Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.

RAJESH lives in Paliyad, a village in India. Like other untouchables, he has to walk 15 minutes to carry water to his family’s home. “We’re not allowed to use the taps in the village that the upper castes use,” he explains. When he was in school, Rajesh and his friends could not even touch the football that the other children played soccer with. “We played with stones instead,” he says.

“I sense that people hate me, but I don’t know why,” says Christina, a teenager from Asia who lives in Europe. “It’s very frustrating,” she adds. “I usually react by isolating myself, but that doesn’t help either.”

“I first learned about prejudice at the age of 16,” says Stanley, from West Africa. “Total strangers told me to get out of town. Some people from my tribe had their houses burned down. My father’s bank account was frozen. As a result, I began to hate the tribe that was discriminating against us.”

Rajesh, Christina, and Stanley are victims of prejudice, and they are not alone. “Hundreds of millions of human beings continue to suffer today from racism, discrimination, xenophobia and exclusion,” explains Koichiro Matsuura, director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). “Such dehumanising practices, fed by ignorance and prejudice, have triggered internal strife in many countries and brought immense human suffering.”

If you have never been a victim of prejudice, you might find it hard to comprehend how traumatic it is. “Some live with it in silence. Others return prejudice with more prejudice,” observes the book Face to Face Against Prejudice. In what ways does prejudice damage lives?

If you belong to a minority group, you might find that people avoid you, give you hostile glances, or make disparaging remarks about your culture. Employment opportunities may be scarce unless you accept menial work that nobody else wants. Perhaps it is hard to get suitable housing. Your children might feel isolated and rejected by classmates at school.

Worse still, prejudice can incite people to violence or even to murder. Indeed, the pages of history are filled with harrowing examples of the violence that prejudice can spawn​—including massacres, genocides, and so-called ethnic cleansings.

Prejudice Through the Centuries

At one time Christians were prime targets of prejudice. Shortly after Jesus’ death, for example, a wave of cruel persecution was directed against them. (Acts 8:3; 9:1, 2; 26:10, 11) Two centuries later professed Christians faced cruel mistreatment. “If there is a plague,” wrote the third-century writer Tertullian, “the cry is at once, ‘The Christians to the Lions.’”

Starting in the 11th century with the Crusades, however, Jews became the unpopular minority in Europe. When the bubonic plague swept through the Continent, killing about a quarter of the population in just a few years, the Jews were an easy target for blame, since they were already hated by many. “The plague gave this hatred an excuse, and the hatred gave people’s fear of the plague a focus,” writes Jeanette Farrell in her book Invisible Enemies.

Eventually, a Jewish man in the south of France “confessed” under torture that Jews had caused the epidemic by poisoning the wells. Of course, his confession was false, but the information was heralded as truth. Soon entire Jewish communities were slaughtered in Spain, France, and Germany. It seems no one paid attention to the real culprits​—the rats. And few people noticed that Jews died of the plague just like everyone else!

Once the fire of prejudice is set ablaze, it can smolder for centuries. In the mid-20th century, Adolf Hitler fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by blaming the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I. At the end of World War II, Rudolf Hoess​—the Nazi commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp—​admitted: “Our military and ideological training took for granted that we had to protect Germany from the Jews.” In order to “protect Germany,” Hoess supervised the extermination of some 2,000,000 people, most of them Jews.

Sadly, as further decades have passed, atrocities have not ended. In 1994, for example, tribal hatred erupted in East Africa between the Tutsi and Hutu, leaving at least half a million people dead. “There were no sanctuaries,” reported Time magazine. “Blood flowed down the aisles of churches where many sought refuge. . . . The fighting was hand to hand, intimate and unspeakable, a kind of bloodlust that left those who managed to escape it hollow eyed and mute.” Even children were not spared the horrifying violence. “Rwanda is a tiny place,” commented one citizen. “But we have all the hatred in the world.”

Conflicts surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia led to the death of over 200,000 people. Neighbors who had lived together peacefully for years killed one another. Thousands of women were raped, and millions of people were forcibly expelled from their homes under the brutal policy of ethnic cleansing.

While most prejudice does not lead to murder, it invariably divides people and fosters resentment. In spite of globalization, racism and racial discrimination “seem to be gaining ground in most parts of the world,” notes a recent UNESCO report.

Can anything be done to eliminate prejudice? To answer that question, we must determine how prejudice takes root in the mind and heart.

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The Traits of Prejudice

In his book The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon W. Allport outlines five types of behavior spawned by prejudice. A person who is prejudiced usually displays one or more of these.

1. Negative remarks. A person speaks disparagingly about the group that he dislikes.

2. Avoidance. He shuns anyone who belongs to that group.

3. Discrimination. He excludes members of the maligned group from certain types of employment, places of residence, or social privileges.

4. Physical attack. He becomes a party to violence, which is designed to intimidate the people he has come to hate.

5. Extermination. He participates in lynchings, massacres, or extermination programs.

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Benaco refugee camp, Tanzania, May 11, 1994

A woman rests by her water containers. Over 300,000 refugees, mostly Hutu Rwandans, crossed into Tanzania

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Photo by Paula Bronstein/Liaison

The Roots of Prejudice

PREJUDICE may have a number of causes. Nevertheless, two well-documented factors are (1) the desire to look for a scapegoat and (2) resentment caused by a history of injustice.

As noted in the preceding article, when a disaster occurs, people often search for someone to blame. When prominent people repeat an accusation against a minority group often enough, it becomes accepted and a prejudice is born. To cite a common example, during economic downturns in Western lands, immigrant workers are frequently blamed for unemployment​—even though they often take jobs that most local people refuse to do.

But not all prejudice stems from the search for a scapegoat. It may also be grounded in history. “It is not too much to say that the slave trade built the intellectual edifice of racism and cultural contempt for black people,” notes the report UNESCO Against Racism. Slave traders tried to justify their disgraceful trafficking of human beings by claiming that Africans were inferior. This unfounded prejudice, which was later extended to include other colonized peoples, still lingers.

All over the world, similar histories of oppression and injustice keep prejudice alive. Animosity between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland goes back to the 16th century, when England’s rulers persecuted and exiled Catholics. The atrocities perpetrated by so-called Christians during the Crusades still arouse strong feelings among Muslims in the Middle East. Serbian and Croatian hostility in the Balkans was aggravated by massacres of civilians during the second world war. As these examples show, a history of enmity between two groups can reinforce prejudice.

The Cultivation of Ignorance

The heart of a toddler does not harbor prejudice. On the contrary, researchers note that a child will often readily play with a child of a different race. By the age of 10 or 11, however, he may reject people of another tribe, race, or religion. During his formative years, he acquires a collection of viewpoints that may last a lifetime.

How are these lessons learned? A child picks up negative attitudes​—both spoken and unspoken—​first from his parents and then from his friends or teachers. Later the neighbors, newspaper, radio, or television might further influence him. Although he likely knows little or nothing about the groups he dislikes, by the time he becomes an adult, he has concluded that they are inferior and untrustworthy. He may even hate them.

With increased travel and commerce, contact between different cultures and ethnic groups has grown in many countries. Nevertheless, the person who has developed a strong prejudice usually clings to his preconceived notions. He may insist on stereotyping thousands or even millions of people, assuming that they all share certain bad qualities. Any negative experience, even if it involves just one person from that group, serves to reinforce his prejudice. Positive experiences, on the other hand, are usually disregarded as exceptions to the rule.

Breaking Free

Although most people condemn prejudice in principle, few escape its clutches. In fact, many who are deeply prejudiced would insist that they are not. Others say it does not matter, especially if people keep their prejudices to themselves. Yet, prejudice does matter because it hurts people and divides them. If prejudice is the child of ignorance, hatred is frequently its grandchild. Author Charles Caleb Colton (1780?-1832) pointed out: “We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.” Nevertheless, if prejudice can be learned, it can also be unlearned. How?

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Religion​—A Force for Tolerance or Prejudice?

In his book The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon W. Allport states that “on the average, Church members seem to be more prejudiced than nonmembers.” This is not surprising, for religion has often been the cause of prejudice rather than its remedy. For example, clerics incited anti-Semitism for centuries. According to A History of Christianity, Hitler once remarked: “As for the Jews, I am just carrying on with the same policy which the Catholic church had adopted for 1500 years.”

During the atrocities in the Balkans, Orthodox and Catholic teachings seemed incapable of producing tolerance and respect toward neighbors who professed another religion.

Likewise, in Rwanda, church members slaughtered fellow believers. The National Catholic Reporter pointed out that the fighting there involved “a real and true genocide for which, unfortunately, even Catholics are responsible.”

The Catholic Church itself has recognized its record of intolerance. In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II asked forgiveness for “deviations of the past” at a public Mass in Rome. During the ceremony, “religious intolerance and injustice towards Jews, women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, the poor and the unborn” were specifically mentioned.

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Top: Refugee camp, Bosnia and Herzegovina, October 20, 1995

Two Bosnian Serb refugees waiting for the end of the civil war

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Photo by Scott Peterson/Liaison

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Taught to hate

A child can pick up negative attitudes from his parents, television, and elsewhere

The End of Prejudice

CAN we recognize tendencies toward prejudice in ourselves? For example, do we draw conclusions as to the character of a person based on his skin color, nationality, ethnic group, or tribe​—even though we do not know that person? Or can we value each person for his or her unique qualities?

In Jesus’ day people who lived in Judea and Galilee generally had “no dealings with Samaritans.” (John 4:9) A saying recorded in the Talmud no doubt expressed the feeling of many Jews: “May I never set eyes on a Samaritan.”

Even Jesus’ apostles may have harbored a degree of prejudice against Samaritans. On one occasion they were not received kindly by a Samaritan village. James and John asked if they should call down fire upon the unresponsive people. By his rebuke, Jesus showed them that their attitude was improper.​—Luke 9:52-56.

Later, Jesus related a parable of a man who had been set upon by robbers during his journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two religious Jewish passersby were not inclined to help the man. A Samaritan, however, stopped and bandaged the man’s wounds. Then he arranged for the man’s care so that he could recover from his injuries. That Samaritan proved himself a real neighbor. (Luke 10:29-37) Jesus’ parable may have helped his listeners to realize that their prejudice blinded them to the good qualities in others. A few years later, John returned to Samaria and preached in many of its villages​—perhaps including the village that he once wanted to have destroyed.​—Acts 8:14-17, 25.

The apostle Peter also had to act impartially when an angel directed him to speak about Jesus to Cornelius, a Roman centurion. Peter was not used to dealing with non-Jews, and most Jews had no love for Roman soldiers. (Acts 10:28) But when Peter saw God’s direction in the matter, he said: “For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial, but in every nation the man that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.”​—Acts 10:34, 35.

The Motive for Fighting Prejudice

Prejudice violates a fundamental principle that Jesus taught: “All things, therefore, that you want men to do to you, you also must likewise do to them.” (Matthew 7:12) Who would want to be despised simply because of his birthplace, skin color, or background? Prejudice also violates God’s standards of impartiality. The Bible teaches that Jehovah “made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth.” (Acts 17:26) All men, therefore, are brothers.

Moreover, God judges each person individually. He does not condemn a person for what his or her parents or ancestors did. (Ezekiel 18:20; Romans 2:6) Even oppression by another nation is not a valid cause for hating individuals from that nation, who likely bear no personal responsibility for the injustice. Jesus taught his followers to ‘love their enemies and pray for those persecuting them.’​—Matthew 5:44, 45.

Thanks to such teachings, first-century Christians were helped to conquer their prejudices and become a unique international brotherhood. They called one another brothers and sisters and considered themselves to be such, even though they came from a host of different cultures. (Colossians 3:9-11; James 2:5; 4:11) The principles that powered this transformation can produce the same benefits today.

Fighting Prejudice Today

Virtually all of us have preconceived ideas, but these do not have to lead to prejudice. “Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed to new knowledge,” says the book The Nature of Prejudice. Often, prejudice can be overcome when people get to know one another. However, notes the same source, “only the type of contact that leads people to do things together is likely to result in changed attitudes.”

This was how John, a Nigerian of the Ibo people, overcame his prejudice against the Hausa people. “At university,” he says, “I met some Hausa students who became my friends, and I discovered that they had fine principles. I worked with one Hausa student on a joint project, and we got on very well; whereas my previous companion, who was an Ibo, did not pull his own weight.”

A Tool to Fight Prejudice

According to the report UNESCO Against Racism, “education could be a precious tool in the struggle against new forms of racism, discrimination and exclusion.” Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Bible education is truly the best help in this regard. (Isaiah 48:17, 18) When people apply its teachings, suspicion is replaced by respect and hatred is extinguished by love.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have found that the Bible is helping them to overcome their prejudices. Indeed, the Bible gives them both the motivation and the opportunity to share activities with people of different cultures and ethnic origins. Christina, quoted in the first article of this series, is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Our meetings at the Kingdom Hall build up my self-confidence,” she says. “I feel secure there because I do not sense that anyone has prejudice toward me.”

Jasmin, also a Witness, remembers being first targeted by racism at age nine. She says: “Thursdays have always been the easiest day of the week for me because on that night I go to the Kingdom Hall. There people show me love. They make me feel special rather than despised.”

Volunteer projects sponsored by Jehovah’s Witnesses also bring together people from different backgrounds. Simon was born in Britain, although his family comes from the Caribbean. He has faced much prejudice when working as a bricklayer for secular construction companies. But this did not occur during the years he served on volunteer projects with his brothers in the faith. “I have worked with fellow Witnesses from many different lands,” Simon relates, “but we learned to get along well with one another. Some of the closest friends I made were people from other countries and other backgrounds.”

Of course, Jehovah’s Witnesses are imperfect people. Therefore, it may be that they have to keep fighting tendencies toward prejudice. But knowing that God is impartial gives them a powerful incentive to do so.​—Ephesians 5:1, 2.

The rewards for fighting prejudice are many. As we mix with people from other backgrounds, our lives are enriched. Furthermore, by means of his Kingdom, God will soon establish a human society where righteousness will dwell. (2 Peter 3:13) At that time prejudice will be conquered forever.

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Do I Harbor Prejudice?

Ask yourself the following questions to analyze whether you might unwittingly be harboring certain prejudices:

1. Do I assume that people from a certain ethnic background, region, or nation have undesirable traits, such as stupidity, laziness, or stinginess? (Many jokes perpetuate this sort of prejudice.)

2. Do I tend to blame immigrants or people of another ethnic group for my economic or social problems?

3. Have I allowed my region’s historical enmity toward another nation to make me feel animosity toward people from that nation?

4. Am I capable of viewing each person I meet as an individual​—irrespective of his skin color, culture, or ethnic background?

5. Do I welcome the opportunity to get to know people of a cultural background different from my own? Do I make the effort to do so?

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In his parable of a good Samaritan, Jesus taught us how to overcome prejudice

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At the home of Cornelius, Peter said: “For a certainty I perceive that God is not partial”

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Bible teaching unites people of different backgrounds

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Jehovah’s Witnesses practice what they have learned

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Christina​—“Meetings at the Kingdom Hall build up my self-confidence”

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Jasmin​—“People show me love. They make me feel special rather than despised”

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Simon, a construction volunteer​—“We learned to get along well with one another”