By DONALD DeMARCO
No one has anything good to say about prejudice. Philosophically, it is universally condemned. Nonetheless, as history has shown, it is not only a common feature of mankind, but extremely difficult to eradicate. It is somewhat of a conundrum: vulgar enough to be universally despised, yet subtle enough to be broadly employed.
Prejudice places people in categories and judges them without sufficient justification. It is therefore a sin against justice.
In his massive study, The Nature of Prejudice, Gordon W. Allport discusses a peculiar feature of prejudice in which the prejudicially held categories conflict with evidence. He offers the example of an Oxford student who once declared, “I hate all Americans, but I have never met one I did not like.” In this case, the evidence was not enough to dislodge the student’s prejudicial view of Americans from his mind.
New evidence may or may not conflict with one’s prejudicial views. If a person believes that all Scottish people are penurious he may be delighted in meeting one who is. “I told you so,” he may remark, triumphantly. On the other hand, if he encounters a generous Scot, he might dismiss the experience as an aberration and maintain his prejudicial view.
Several years ago, there was an abiding prejudice against Armenians who lived in Fresno County, Calif. They were said to be “dishonest, lying, and deceitful.” However, upon investigative research, no evidence could be found that would support such an accusation. It was revealed that the Armenians living in this area had good credit ratings, applied less often for charity, and appeared less frequently in legal cases. The basis for prejudice against them remained entirely open to speculation.
Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Her new book, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe (June 2016), shows that it is crime, and not race, which drives police actions and prison rates. Her rigorous study counters the more fashionable view that police, in general, are motivated by racism.
She argues that no government agency is more dedicated to the proposition that “black lives matter” than today’s accountable police department. Police save lives, of all color, because they remove dangerous criminals from the streets.
As police retreat for their own safety, crime increases. Mac Donald offers a stern warning that attacks on the criminal-justice system based on race, from the White House on down, are eroding authority and placing the lives of many at risk.
President Obama declared that blacks were right to believe that the criminal-justice system was often stacked against them. He repeated this message as he toured the country.
Hillary Clinton decries a “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”
Yet, as Mac Donald shows, the basis for incarceration statistics is crime and not race. One is left to wonder whether Clinton is trying to convince others of her liberality, or simply pandering for votes. Unfortunately, her words, like those of the president, may be fanning the flames of racism by convincing people that police are motivated by race rather than by protecting human rights.
In the Academe, Smith College’s president flagellated herself for asserting that “all lives matter,” instead of spouting the current and more politically correct mantra, “black lives matter.” She feared that she had momentarily dishonored the black people of America. She was probably unaware that in the year 2013, blacks made up 42 percent of all police killers whose race was known, although blacks make up only 13 percent of the nation’s population.
Another argument allegedly supporting racism is that blacks were turned down for prime mortgage loans in the year 2000 at twice the rate that whites were turned down. Seldom, pointed out, however, is the fact that whites were turned down at nearly twice the rate as Asian Americans were turned down.
Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell states that “Mac Donald’s book of documented facts demolishes many fashionable notions. . . . We need to stop this nonsense, before there is a race war that no one can win.”
Nor are the media helpful in fighting prejudice. Allport’s assessment continues to ring true in 2016:
“There are grounds for doubting the effectiveness of mass propaganda as a device for controlling prejudice. People whose ears and eyes are bombarded all day with blandishments of special interests tend to develop a propaganda blindness and deafness. And what chance has a mild message of brotherhood when sandwiched in between layers of news reporting war, intrigue, hatred, and crime?”
The mass media are more a propaganda machine than an educator.
Democracy holds to a view of equality, brotherhood, tolerance, and diversity. The erosion of democracy in America is concomitant with an increase in prejudice. Christianity teaches that we are all made in the image of God. This notion serves as a basis for both brotherhood as well as for democracy.
Neither the present government nor the mass media are effective in countering prejudice. What this means is that Christianity is, at the present moment, vitally needed in order to begin to overcome the negative prejudices that are currently tearing the country apart. And yet, this is also a time in which Christianity is ridiculed and its adherents marginalized.
The time is indeed, most precarious. Without proper leadership and understanding, we can expect more violence.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn,, and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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