Eclectic Grounds

A new study by by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and University Bielefeld compared levels and nature of prejudice against immigrants, ethnic-cultural minorities, Jews, Muslims, women, gay men and lesbian women, homeless and disabled people in several European countries. Eight countries were selected for the study: Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Hungary. The results are alarming.

These are some results of the study:

50,4% of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “there are too many immigrants” in their country. This statement indicates a generalized and blind rejection of immigrants.

24.5% supposes that “Jews have too much influence in [country]“. Here, a traditional facet of anti-Semitism appears that mirrors anti-Semitic conspiracy myths.

54.4% of the Europeans believe that “the Islam is a religion of intolerance.” This makes obvious that many Europeans share a generalized negative image of the Islam (and of Muslims as the agreement to additional statements reveals).

Nearly one third (31,3%) of the Europeans somewhat or strongly agree that “there is a natural hierarchy between black and white people”. Thus, they agree to a very blatant and direct statement indicating the belief in ethnic hierarchies legitimised by implied natural differences.

A majority of Europeans of 60.2% stick to traditional gender roles that result in economical and power gender inequality as they are demanding that “women should take their role as wives and mothers more seriously.”

42,6% deny equal value of gay men and lesbian women and judge homosexuality as ‘immoral’.

Download the press release and short report here.

The notion of a “global war on terror” has always been nonsense. It has manufactured a threatening picture of an alleged global ideology of hatred for the western world. But the “global war” image obscures the fact that every crisis zone has its unique context and that most people who join or support insurgent groups do so for their very personal reasons which are far from ideological.

This still seems to be a perspective shared by but few officials in the US military:

Matthew Hoh, a senior US state department official and former marine who was based until recently in Zabul province [of Afghanistan], explained his resignation on 10 September 2009 by referring to his experiences in the Korengal valley and elsewhere. These, he is reported as saying:

“taught him ‘how localised the insurgency was. I didn’t realize that a group in this valley here has no connection with an insurgent group two kilometres away.’ Hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups across Afghanistan, he decided, had few ideological ties to the Taliban but took its money to fight the foreign intruders and maintain their own local power bases. ‘That’s really what shook me,’ he said. ‘I thought it was more nationalistic. But it’s localism. I would call it valley-ism’” (see Karen De Young, “U.S. official resigns over Afghan war“,Washington Post, 27 October 2009).

Found here.

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie shares her thoughts about how popular stories may create one-sided, single, images about places and individuals. These ’single stories’, she argues, lead to misunderstanding the complexity of the lives of others; it emphasises difference and robs people of their dignity.

She beautifully illustrates this with stories of her own life and argues that we need a balance of stories between the culturally and economically powerful and those whose stories often remain unheard.

On ResetDOC, Michael Dillon comments on violence by the Chinese government against the Uyghur population and points to the underlying structural racism:

If [Uyghurs] don’t speak and read Chinese correctly, then they do not get a job. But they are also excluded for ethnic reasons: Han Chinese prefer to work with Han. Simply, there is a strong anti-Uyghur racism there.

Dillon also comments on the hesitant role of European countries and the US:

The difference is certainly that the Uyghurs are Muslims and Muslims are not very popular in the West right now. Though the main difference is that with Tibet there is an alternative government in exile under the Dalai Lama, so the Chinese have always been able to point at the Dalai Lama and say that he is undermining their control over Tibet. And a lot of Tibetans as we know support the Dalai Lama. That is not the case for Xinjiang. The Uyghurs do look to Central Asian states, such as Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, as a sort of a mother, but there is not an alternative government.

ResetDOC also features two more articles that portray the economic backgrounds of the conflict as well as the role of Turkish language spoken by the Uyghurs.

You might say that that in-group bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing – after all, it’s what keeps us together with the ones that are closest to us. Except, it makes us think that all our problems are despite out efforts, while all their problems are because of their inability, which is a real problem once we try to talk to a person outside our in-group.

That’s why it is good to be reminded sometimes of how random group identities are anyway.

Cartoon by xkcd.
Thanks to lisa.

Update: You can find a good social psychological overview of “the rules that govern groups” here.

I like philosophical perspectives on cultural and social phenomena, because they go beyond explaining them but try to give ethical and universal instructions on how to act. One of my favourite authors in this sense is K.A. Appiah and his writing on cosmopolitanism and identity politics.

In a 2003 article in Loyola of Los Angesles Law Review, T. P. Seto explores terrorism from an ethics perspective. Can we condemn terrorism, based on consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics? Each of them, he concludes, is unsatisfactory because they fail in being culturally neutral and provide little practical guidance. It’s a recommendable read for anyone who wants to explore the meaning of terrorism could be and the moral dilemmas of accepting or opposing it lie.

I want to quote the final section of the article here: Based on the previous argumentation, Seto gives guidelines of how societies may ethically deal with terrorism. Any solution, he argues, must be long-term to be successful and tackle the foundations of terrorist movements:

Punishment is moral. We therefore must punish, as we have. In the absence of a common ethos of reciprocity, however, punishment is likely to feed a cycle of mutual defection. In the short run, we can seek to disrupt the organizational structures that make terrorism possible. Unfortunately, terrorism requires very little organization; the Israelis have attempted this solution for decades, and have utterly failed. The only real long-term solutions are (1) expansion of our We to include the terrorists, or (2) the genocidal elimination of populations that feed the terrorists. The second is inconsistent with our internalized moral codes, for good reason; it is also impractical in most circumstances. Were we to try to eliminate all Muslims in the world, we would probably pay a price too high to contemplate; if we did, most would conclude that we got exactly what we deserved. Our only real choice is to work to expand our We—to develop an ethos of reciprocity that includes the terrorists, even as we punish them.

These shirts apparently are popular amongst Israeli soldiers these days:

According to Sociological Images, “the shirt on the left shows a pregnant woman, clearly meant to be Arab/Palestinian, in crosshairs and says ‘1 Shot 2 Kills.’ The one on the right has a kid carrying a gun in crosshairs and says “The smaller, the harder,” or maybe ‘the smaller it is, the harder it is.’”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has led the two groups become strangers to each other. Through policy, but also though social processes over the decades of violence, both groups have become indifferent to each other’s suffering. Haaretz (via Jörg Lau) recently ran an article about Israeli soldiers’ behaviour during the latest Gaza offensive. One soldier is quoted saying “The lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify [human rights abuses] that way”

Lucy Nusseibeh at opendemocracy.org analyses the emotive effects of the conflict:

The result of the massive and indiscriminate use of force is to diminish Israelis’ as well as Palestinians’ human security. Both are locked in a (very asymmetrical) system that is dominated by fear, victimhood, violence, and (for most) a striking lack of empathy.

What’s happening in Israel and Palestine just as in most conflicts is that the devaluation of the other creates the ideological justification which makes it possible for a group to commit collective crimes. Human rights violations are facilitated by group distinctions made absolute and by the consequent application of separate moral standards for in‐group and out‐group.

There are a few sociological and psychological insights that can explain this pattern: 

Personal identity and group identity: When personal identity fades behind an absolutist definition in terms of one’s group, and when this group is excluded from the human family, it is no longer morally unacceptable to harm and kill these individuals.

Victims are never innocent: We can see the role of dehumanisation of victims as central feature of atrocities on all levels. On the psychological perspective, a central theme in the dehumanisation of victims by torturers is the concept of just‐world thinking. It refers to the blaming of victims as ultimately responsible for their sufferings in an act of self‐persuasion. The innocence of the individual cannot be established as the individual cannot not be cleared of the “misdeeds, evil intention, or faults” of her communal groups. A devaluation of the other and diminishing concerns with their suffering is the consequence.

Moral double standards: The dehumanisation and application of negative stereotypes against a communal group may lead to a justification of atrocities by reshaping moral standards and turning evil deeds in good ones: the perpetrator is doing a good thing by eliminating evil people. Out-groups who become victims of atrocities often have a history of victimisation and marginalisation, thereby socially guiding the thought processes of perpetrators. 

The role of the state: In modern society, the state is the most important instance of authority, which individuals derive their rights from. To be excluded from the state means being regarded a non‐person, vulnerable to arbitrary treatment.

Sociology of the army: Ideological elements are inherent to any modern army. Armies create systems of ideas and symbols that revolve around discipline and giving up on an individual moral system. Symbols, in‐group fetishism and the channelling of aggressiveness toward the enemy become central elements in this ideology. In this way, separate morals and manners different from the population are established. 

For excellent research on how dehumanization is used by soldiers and societies in conflict to rationalize violence, look up  H.C. Kelman’s book “The social context of torture”, Mika Haritos‐Fatouras’ work, Anette Smeulers’ interviews with Greek torturers, entitled “What transforms ordinary people into gross human rights violators?”, and Alex Alvarez’ “Destructive Beliefs: Genocide and the Role of Ideology”.

All but Alvarez can be downloaded as PDF for free.

Several experiments in social psychology have tried to find out about the effects that arbitrary stereotyping and discrimination or privilege and power has on individuals. The most famous of these were the Zimbardo experiments.

Another one of those experience was conducted in a primary school by teacher with herclass of third-graders. To make the kids understand racial discrimination, the teacher split them up according to blue and brown eye colour. One group was defined as superior, the other as inferior.

I recently saw a Frontline documentary about the case filmed 14 years later, in which the former pupils describe the profound effects that the experience had on them. Quite ordinary, white people from a provincial town in the US state Iowa describe the humiliation, anger, demoralisation and hatred they felt at their own personal discrimination – and the feeling of (unfounded) power they got when they were in the dominant group.. 

“A Class Divided” – find the documentary here.

It’s quite intense to see the distress and violence that the participants describe, which resulted from entirely arbitrary faultlines. Experiments like those certainly help us understand the impact of ethnic, religious or any other out-group stereotyping. When talking about “blacks”, “Turks”, “Muslim” or “women” in a discrimatory manner, we usually internalise our role – discimated and disciminators alike. Documenations like the one here can shake us up a little about our everyday behaviour.

Thanks Nayano for digging it up!

A great commentary by Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua at Project Syndicate:

They [the Palestinians] are our neighbors, and they will be our neighbors in the future. So, when we decide to fight a war against them, we have to consider very carefully the character of that war, its duration, and the effect of its violence. We Israelis have no power to extirpate the Hamas government from Gaza, much as we did not have the power to eliminate the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the voice of the Palestinian people’s national aspirations, or Hezbollah from Lebanon in the war of 2006.

Ariel Sharon and Menachem Begin went all the way to Beirut in the early 1980’s, paying a terrible and bloody price, to try to eliminate the PLO – a result that could never be obtained. And what happened? In the end, Sharon and then Binyamin Netanyahu both ended up sitting down at the negotiating table with Yassir Arafat and his representatives to try to reach an agreement. Now Arafat’s former deputy, Abu Mazen, is a frequent and welcome guest in our country.

We Israelis must begin to realize this simple fact: the Arabs are not metaphysical creatures, but human beings, and human beings have it within themselves to change. After all, we Israelis change our positions, mitigate our opinions, and open ourselves up to new ideas. So we would do well to get out of our heads as quickly as possible the illusion that we can somehow annihilate Hamas or eradicate them from the Gaza strip.

Instead, we have to work, with caution and good sense, to reach a reasonable and detailed agreement for a lasting ceasefire that has within it the perspective that Hamas can change. Such a change is possible and can be acted upon. Such fundamental changes of heart and mind have happened many times in the course of history.

Read the full text here.

In early December the Anne Frank Foundation and Leiden University issued the annual ‘Racism and Extremism Monitor’ for the Netherlands. Its key conclusion:

The problem of ‘Islamophobia’ in the Netherlands has worsened significantly in recent years.  Not only is there a negative climate of opinion towards Muslims, violence against this community has increased and there is greater tolerance of anti-Muslim offences. This is one of the most striking findings of the Racism and Extremism Monitor.

Violence against Muslims rising in an increasingly anti-Muslim climate:

The number of violent incidents against Muslims has grown significantly while overall incidents of racist violence were decreasing, the report states. The violence is accompanied by a general anti-Muslim climate which tends to facilitate the violent attacks. The appearance of the anti-Islam party PVV (by ‘Fitna’ author and populist Geert Wilders) has made Islam-bashing politically tolerable. The party is become part of the reason why right-wing extremisms seems to be more acceptable again to a larger part of the population.

The government targets Islamic radicalism, while letting neo-Nazis grow:

The government’s activities against political radicalism seem to worsen islamophobia rather than create a realistic picture of the origin of radical ideology. The government monitors political Islam rigidly while leaving right-wing extremism virtually unchecked, despite the growth of neo-Nazi activities from 40 to 400 in the last four years. 

The report cites the annual school inspection report saying that: “Schools are much more likely to face “white” extremism (…) and clashes between native Dutch students and students from an immigrant background than religious extremism.” More than half of the no-Muslim youth between 14 and 16 years, according to a poll, have negative attitudes toward Muslims.

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports in English on the publication of the Racism and Extremism Monitor here and here.