Nonverbal communication and culture. Identity, stereotypes and prejudices, страница 22

Prejudice

Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a cultural group based on little or no experience. Whereas stereotypes tell us what a group is like, prejudice tells us how we are likely to feel about that group.

The French philosopher and essayist Voltaire knew of the dangers associated with prejudice when he wrote that "Prejudices are what fools use for reason." His rationale for this observation was simple—deep felt prejudices cause serious problems. Let us examine the nature of prejudice and some of the problems associated with this destructive activity.

Defining Prejudice. J. Macionis (1998) offers a detailed definition of prejudice while explaining its damaging effect on intercultural communication:

Prejudice amounts to a rigid and irrational generalization about a category of people. Prejudice is irrational to the extent that people hold inflexible attitudes supported by little or no direct evidence. Prejudice may target people of a particular social class, sex, sexual orientation, age, political affiliation, race or ethnicity.

When applied to the interpersonal and intercultural setting, prejudice often includes various levels of hostility. This hostility dimension is explained by J. Levin, who believes that prejudice deals with negative feelings, beliefs, and action-tendencies, or discriminatory acts, that arise against human beings by virtue of the status they occupy or are perceived to occupy as members of a minority group.

Expressions of Prejudice. Prejudices, like stereotypes, are learned. For some people, prejudices offer rewards ranging from feelings of superiority to feelings of power. Prejudice is expressed in a variety of ways – at times hidden and on other occasions overt.

Knowing how prejudice is manifested will help you identify your own prejudices and in so doing will greatly improve the manner in which you perceive, approach, and interact with other people. The following five forms of prejudices were identified by G. Allport.

(1) Prejudice can be expressed through antilocution. This level of prejudice involves talking about a member of the target group in negative and stereotypic terms. Someone would be engaging in this form of prejudice if he or she told a friend, “Those Germans did it once, so we can never trust any of them ever again.” Another example of antilocution prejudice is the statement “Don't pay the Mexicans very much. They don't have any education and will work for almost nothing.”

People act out prejudice when they avoid and/or withdraw from contact with the disliked group. The problems associated with this form of prejudice are obvious. How do you interact, solve problems, and resolve serious conflicts when you are separated from other people? You can no longer learn from, support, or persuade people if you avoid them and close all of the channels of communication. On both the international and domestic levels, avoidance and withdrawal often have marked the intercultural exchange. History is full of examples of how one nation or group of people refused to attend (withdrew from) an important peace conference. For decades, the political leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, East and West Germany, and Israel and its Arab neighbors rebuffed each other, only to discover decades later that talking benefited both parties. What is true with regard to governments is also characteristic of individual behavior.

Have there been occasions when you, like governments, withdrew from communication because a person was a different color or spoke a different language? When this happens, there can be little communication.

(2) When discrimination is the expression of prejudice, it may be based on race (racism), gender (sexism) or any of the other identity groups. Discrimination may vary from very subtle nonverbal behavior (lack of eye contact or excluding someone from conversation)  to verbal insults, exclusion from jobs or other economic opportunities, to physical violence and systematic exclusion. The prejudiced person also undertakes to exclude all members of the group in question from residential housing, political rights, educational and recreational opportunities, churches, hospitals, or some other type of social institution. Often in cases of discrimination, we observe ethnocentrism, stereotyping, and prejudice coming together in a type of fanaticism that completely obstructs any form of successful intercultural communication.