CHANGING RACE RELATIONS
BY MAXWELL MILLER
IT is easier to discuss the brotherhood of man than to practice it. We are told that it exists in reality, that racial and other group prejudices have been eliminated. The reality, however, has not been translated into the fact of ordinary social intercourse. Only by the herculean efforts of minorities is mankind pulled, pushed, cajoled or castigated onward toward its goals.
If each new generation were born into a world freshly reconstructed according to the highest standards and noblest plans of its parents, progress would be a relatively simple and rapid matter. The aspirations of one generation would thus be realized in the next, and all the old errors disappear. Unfortunately, we hand on to posterity not only our achievements but also our mistakes.
Mencius once remarked that a man with a crooked finger knows his finger is crooked, but a man with a distorted mind does not know his mind is distorted. Here is the fundamental obstacle to the realization of humanity’s oneness. The accumulated mass of traditional and established folkways presses upon and channelizes us from infancy, so that by far the greater part of all our activities and thinking is ritualistic and automatic. It is difficult to trace the influences bearing upon even such opinions and judgments as we form deliberately. At the same time, however, we are quick to defend our beliefs from critical anaylsis.
Perhaps such of our thinking as we are most eager and careful to justify when attacked, is the thinking which other people have done for us. The more insecure a basis of fact we have to support our convictions, the more readily do we rise to righteous wrath in their behalf. The stupendous literature of so-called racial sociology since de Gobineau, by and large consists of elaborate justifications of the white man’s history of world imperialism. The "white man’s burden,” his “civilizing mission,” the doctrine of Nordic supremacy, and manifold variations on the theme have served to sanctify the bloody subjugation of other peoples to the advantage of the European. Paradoxically, but inevitably, as the nations on the other side of the color line gain power, they voice similar protestations of divine guidance in their international piracies. At this point the devotees of pale-faced divinity—notably Oswald Spengler—gloomily prophesy the downfall of Western civilization. Nowhere, however, do they recognize the humor involved in the successful competition of a so-called inferior race against the divinely ordained Nordic.
Much of the literature on racial groups was in mystical phraseology, we suspect because of the authors’ own mystification on the subject. Certainly none of the much-vaunted assertions has been well substantiated by evidence even to this day, while the greater part has been discarded among careful social scientists. Outside the field of students of social science, however, the old, false notions hold sway. Regretfully on the part of some, aggressively on the part of many, the myths of racial inferiority are held up as demonstrations of the workings of the Divine will among men.
Similarly, racial prejudice has been commonly ascribed to some innate or instinctive trait, which inclines us toward members of one group, but away from members of another. The theory of instinctive social attitudes was strongly held until within the last decade, when researches indicated that probably all of our social attitudes originate in the conditioning influences of our environment. Thereupon the structure of instinct social psychology collapsed. In contrast to writers who hazarded guesses as to the number of instincts, which ranged from two or three in some cases to four or five hundred in others, there came the refreshing admission on the part of such earnest men as Garth to
Presentation of the "Seven Valleys” of Bahá’u’lláh. Dramatized by Mme. Barry Orlova and Mrs. Basil Hall, in the garden of Mrs. Editha Simonds, Sowberry Court on Thames, England, where the Bahá’í Theatre Group has its Summer Theatre.
the effect that their measurement tests and hypotheses regarding racial inferiorities or superiorities were questionable. Most social scientists today are inclined to doubt the value of applying the same standards to groups of different cultural background, and they emphasize the question of individual differences rather than the elusive one of innate group differences.
This is not to say, however, that all groups of people could cope equally well with the living conditions of, say, New York City, if suddenly placed there. The education and general culture of an isolated Siberian tribe is not fitted for metropolitan life, nor is it meant to be. Each culture develops to meet the needs of the group environment. In this way to exchange the places of such a Siberian tribesman and a New Yorker would place them at a more or less equal disadvantage. In any one environment, however, that group has the advantage whose cultural background has developed to meet the needs involved. For this reason it has appeared even to sincere thinkers that aliens and others were inferior to Americans, since the native resident was so much better equipped to live in the United States. They fail to see what is indicated in the second generation of immigrants, that if these first had been brought up to deal with the conditions of our industrial society, they would be fully able to compete on the same terms with the native born. It is not necessary to point out in detail how many surmount even this difficulty to surpass the success of the average native American.
We are probably born with something like a skeletal psychological mechanism, capable of reacting to stimuli, but having no discernible predetermined complex social attitudes. It would be absurd to expect an infant to distinguish successfully between members of the various racial groups, as the supposition of instinctive racial prejudice would presuppose. To do this, that child would have to know the multitude of cultural and physiological indices by which adults attempt to classify mankind. Starting with the clean slate of the infant mind, however, we can observe how parents, friends, relatives, the church, school, newspapers, motion pictures, etc., write on it the deeply entrenched prejudices and traditional habits of previous generations.
Two instances in point can be taken from
the Inquiry study "Racial Attitudes among
Children,” edited by Bruno Lasker. One
tells of a little girl of about five years of age
[Page 700]
who was traveling by
train with her mother.
The colored porter took a fancy to her and
amused her with gifts and pleasantries.
Finally he took her with him on a trip
through the train, which she enjoyed
immensely. Returning to her mother she said
happily, “He's a nice, nasty, dirty nigger,
isn’t he, Mummy?” Here was no awareness
of the significance of the words nor the racial
antagonism involved; simply the repetition
of the description familiar to the child mind,
with her own grateful appreciation of his
kindness.
A second example illustrates the influence of the motion picture in forming racial attitudes. A group of children were tested for their reactions to Chinese, and were found to have almost no adverse reaction. They were then shown the film "Son of the Gods,” a Chinese story, and subsequently re-tested. The results this time showed an overwhelming prejudice toward Chinese people. Eighteen months later, testing revealed that this prejudice was still strong.
Generally speaking, we spend most of our time thinking the thoughts of dead men. We come into a world which is ready-made, which demands conformity to its ways from us, and which penalizes originality. Even rebelling we must rebel along familiar lines. If unsuccessful we are rejected and passed over; if successful we simply change the brand of orthodoxy.
The desired change in race relations cannot be brought about simply by repeating one’s belief in the brotherhood of man. This phrase has been mouthed for several thousand years to no great avail. To continue in this way is sheer hypocrisy. The growing accuracy of social studies has displaced the shibboleths of racial inequalities, as the great religious teachings in the minds of those who truly understood cut through racial barriers as a sword. We must work singly and collectively to identify all our activities as individuals and to the disregard of group lines. Bahá’ís should be distinguished not by color, nationality, or race, but by the extent to which they fulfill in practice the teachings. We must learn to think straight, and to think as much as possible for ourselves. Having perceived the reality, we must immediately and without compromise translate the reality into social fact.
