Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict

New Zealand Journal of Psychology, Jun 2003 by Atkins, Stephen G

Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict

Augoustinos, M. & Reynolds, K., (Editors)

2001, London: Sage. ISBN 0 7619 6208 5. 362 pages.

Prejudice Viewed from Down-Under

A professor at a major university in Auckland recently told my wife and I that prejudice is "just not a problem in Auckland." Sadly, for reasons I describe below, I'd say Auckland is awash with prejudice. In my own life here, I've routinely experienced racist comments around Auckland's far North Shore. It might be a lot different in Auckland's city centre (and elsewhere in New Zealand), but it's probably not reasonable to conclude that "prejudice just isn't a problem" here.

For instance, it is extremely rare in New Zealand (in my experience) to find professional university-degreed white folks from Britain, Canada, America, or northern Europe stocking grocery market shelves or cleaning toilets for a living. It is, unfortunately, quite commonplace to find post-professional university-degreed non-white folks employed here in this way....and indefinitely so. Most I've met speak excellent English (and probably have since kindergarten). But their accents betray that they are not Brits or Kiwis or North Americans. One immigrant I know of holds postgraduate degrees from two prestigious British universities. He formerly (and quite recently) served as a full professor in a "high-tech" field at a prestigious university on the Mediterranean. Awarded abundant points on his New Zealand immigration form for his immense technical education, he's been here for a few years now - driving a taxicab. Another unfortunately typical example: a husband and wife in strife-torn Sri Lanka had applied to the NZ immigration service only to be told that they were close enough to qualifying (with their Bachelors degrees) that they should pursue Masters degrees and then re-apply. In desperation, they forced themselves and their children to sacrifice normal family relations so that both parents could continue full-time employment while also completing an intensive (and expensive) full-time MBA programme in Sri Lanka. These parents had their children take care of themselves for two years under these stressful conditions just to qualify for New Zealand immigration. Having been here over a year now, they still work in menial entry-level employment (delivering morning newspapers house-to-house and working a late-night shift pumping petrol into cars) - with personal finances so depleted by the move that additional relocation is highly unlikely.

Just from my own casual acquaintances, I could easily provide a dozen Auckland examples like this - I suspect many Aucklanders could. Obviously, the "plural of anecdote is not necessarily data" (anonymous aphorism) and the role of prejudice in this problem remains an empirical question - but if Kiwi business interests required this kind of deceptive "points-based" immigration to flatten local salary pressures, it surely has gone far enough (and doubtless went far enough several years ago).

Collectively, we've immigrated tens of thousands of people into New Zealand under this sort of false premise - potentially destroying tens of thousands of careers (given the broad gaps this situation is placing into each such immigrant's CV). Over the past few years, I've heard New Zealand media commentators fretting about a "brain drain" - and in this fretting, I don't recall the mention of under-employed immigrants with professional degrees and experience. The factors and motives that have created this sad situation will not all be connected to prejudice, but it's a very likely component - and the outcome is shocking. It is, in my view, a national travesty - and certainly suggests that prejudice may indeed be "a problem in Auckland" and elsewhere.

Tragically, prejudice is nearly ubiquitous and usually insidious. Many of us probably first deal with it overtly and intentionally as kindergartners or primary schoolers via pejorative non-verbal cues or pathetic humor targeting some demographic group. The early sarcasm-laden school-year experiences likely act upon coping systems developed in early childhood (i.e., attachment to the familiar, e.g., Aboud, 1988) - and thus foster overt and covert out-grouping behaviors - probably encouraging them to become all-the-more entrenched and resistant to change. This new book, edited by Australian university scholars Martha Augoustinos and Katherine Reynolds, goes far in detailing and unpacking what many would reasonably describe as the defining dilemma of our time. This book is a master work-and its title is quite appropriate. It is a summary piece of the state-of-the art in prejudice research (and it's likely future) as viewed by nearly two dozen psychology scholars working in the Southern Hemisphere. And it manages to make a substantial contribution to the literature at the same time as it is reasonably comprehensive.

In calling it "Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict" the editors are using those latter terms not just to expand the reader's first impression of the book's content, but to focus it. In other words, there are obvious applications of prejudice theories (beyond racism) that are purposefully omitted, probably due to a lack of highly salient relevance to the serious social conflicts of our age - or because some forms (like sexism and anti-Semitism) are justifiably appropriate for separate volumes. For instance, while a few pages do describe sexism research, other non-racial prejudices (i.e., irrational pejorative prejudgments) related to perceived attributes (e.g., age, religions, occupations, etc.), are not explicitly covered. However, generic prejudice-related theories (e.g., Social Identity Theory and Self-categorization Theory) are treated rather thoroughly.