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Scientific Study of Non-Violence
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avoid members of the disliked groups, even perhaps at the cost of considerable inconvenience. In this case, the bearer of prejudice does not directly inflict harm upon the group he dislikes. He takes the burden of accommodation and withdrawal entirely upon himself.
The prejudiced person makes detrimental distinctions of an active sort. He undertakes to exclude all members of the group in question from certain types of employment, from residential housing, political rights, educational or recreational opportunities, churches, hospitals or from some other social privileges. Segregation is an institutionalized form of discrimination, enforced legally or by common custom.
In cases where prejudice breaks into a violent attack on the other group, one can be fairly certain that the following steps have prepared the way:
(a) There has been a long period of categorical prejudgement. The victim group has long been typed. People have begun to lose the power to think of the members of an out-group as individuals.
(b) There has been a long period of verbal complaint against the victimized minority. The habits of suspicion and blaming have become firmly rooted.
(c) There has been growing discrimination.
(d) There has been outside strain upon members of the in-group. They have for a long time suffered from economic privation, a sense of low-status, irritation due to political developments such as war-time restrictions or fear of unemployment.
(e) People have grown tired of their own inhibitions and are reaching a state of explosion. Irrationalism comes to have a strong appeal.
(f) Organized movements have attracted these discontented individuals, or a less formal organization--a mob-may serve their purpose in case no formal organization exists.
(8) From such a formal or informal social organization, the individual derives courage and support. He sees that his irritation and his wrath are socially sanctioned, (social facilitation). His impulses to violence are thus justified by the standards of his group-or so he thinks
(h) Some precipitating incident occurs. What might
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