Private and public prejudice: a response to Andras Kovacs - Part V: Democratic Process and Nonpublic Politics

Social Research, Spring, 2002 by Nils Muiznieks

IN his analysis of latent prejudice, Andras Kovacs demonstrates the methodological sophistication that can now be harnessed to penetrate the often thin veneer of political correctness to illuminate closet anti-Semites, homophobes, or racists. As a practitioner involved in trying to prevent or counter prejudice, I would like to complement the analysis with a focus on public, rather than private, manifestations of prejudice.

A skeptic would argue that private, or in this case, latent prejudice should not be a matter of concern as long as it is not made public or acted upon. This perspective is reflected in a comment attributed to a diversity manager at a top multinational company: "I could hire a racist, but not someone who discriminates." Thus, the challenge is to demonstrate the link between prejudicial sentiments, public speech, and action.

An overview of recent psychological research suggests that there is a link, often indirect, between prejudice and hate crimes--violent acts against people, property, or organizations because of the target's real or imputed group affiliation. Hate crimes in the United States are rarely committed by organized groups but by otherwise law-abiding youth who see little wrong with their actions. That perpetrators of crimes see little wrong with committing violence because of the target's real or imputed group affiliation is, of course, caused by prejudice, which clouds their judgment, twists their morals, and acts as a cognitive filter highlighting the target. Often, such youth claim to perceive societal sanction for attacks on certain groups (American Psychological Association, 1998: 3).

As Andras Kovacs notes, people occasionally project their own prejudicial opinions onto an imagined majority. However, perceptions of societal sanction often have some basis in prevailing public discourse. I do not fully share Kovacs' view that "the public expression of racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice is condemned in Hungary, just as it is in virtually every civilized state in the world." In Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states, consistent condemnation or ostracism of politicians or other public figures because of their racist speech is more the exception than the rule. Rather than challenging or undermining ethnic stereotypes and prejudices, the education system and media in the region frequently reproduce them. Legal sanctions against hate speech, anathema in the United States but common in Western Europe, exist in Central and Eastern Europe, but are almost never enforced (Muiznieks, 2000: 2-4; Open Society Institute, 2000: 5-13, 44-89).

Those who subscribe to the American "free speech" tradition argue that most public expressions of prejudice, repugnant as they may be, are protected forms of speech unless there is a clear and present danger that they will lead to action. (1) However, the European debate about hate speech changed after the genocide in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, in which the media often played a leading role in inciting and organizing violence (see, e.g., Splasak et al., 1997). There is a growing consensus in Europe that hate speech must be combated more vigorously and general agreement that Holocaust-denial should be punishable by law (European Conference, 2000: 7).

Of course, the overzealous application of hate speech provisions can pose a grave danger to freedom of expression. However, impunity holds dangers as well, because the public can become rapidly socialized into accepting certain patterns of speech and behavior as a norm. For example, a colleague in St. Petersburg, Russia, has claimed that the local population has become so accustomed to seeing neo-Nazi graffiti with swastikas that nobody notices any longer. Drawing public attention to a problem that has become "invisible" is extremely difficult.

Another problem with over-interpreting data on personal prejudice is that there is not always a correlation between prejudice in the private and public realms. For example, research on Latvia in the early 1990s found that the Latvian majority was far more willing to accept the Russian minority as neighbors or marriage partners than as co-citizens (Poulsen, 1994: 21-27). In other words, tolerance and inclusion in the private sphere went hand in hand with prejudice and exclusion in the public sphere.

New developments in European antidiscrimination law reflect recognition of the difficulty of proving a link between private sentiments and intentions on the one hand, and public outcomes on the other. Proving discrimination in the United States often requires demonstrating not only a disparate outcome, but disparate intent. When a new piece of Europewide legislation, the so-called Race Directive, (2) enters into force in the European Union in 2003, victims will often need only to demonstrate a disparate outcome to prove discrimination. Once a prima facie case of direct and indirect discrimination is demonstrated through the use of statistics, the burden of proof will shift to the respondent.