Page 344 - The Social Animal

326 The Social Animal

of slavery. The economic advantages of discrimination are all too
clear when one looks at the success certain craft unions have had,
over the years, in denying membership to women and members of
ethnic minorities, thereby keeping them out of the relatively high-
paying occupations controlled by the unions. For example, the period
between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s was one of great politi-
cal and legal advancement for the civil rights movement. Yet in 1966
only 2.7 percent of union-controlled apprenticeships were held by
black workers—an increase of only 1 percent over the preceding 10
years. In the mid-1960s, the U.S. Department of Labor surveyed
four major cities in search of minority-group members serving as ap-
prentices among union plumbers, steamfitters, sheetmetal workers,
stonemasons, lathers, painters, glaziers, and operating engineers. In
the four cities, they failed to find a single black person thus em-
51
ployed. Clearly, prejudice pays off for some people. Although en-
lightened legislation and social action over the past four decades have
produced significant changes in these statistics, the situation remains
far from equitable for minority groups.
Discrimination, prejudice, and negative stereotyping increase
sharply as competition for scarce jobs increases. In one of his classic
early studies of prejudice in a small industrial town, John Dollard 52
documented the fact that, although there was initially no discernible
prejudice against Germans in the town, it came about as jobs became
scarce.

Local whites largely drawn from the surrounding farms mani-
fested considerable direct aggression toward the newcomers.
Scornful and derogatory opinions were expressed about these
Germans, and the native whites had a satisfying sense of supe-
riority toward them. . . . The chief element in the permission
to be aggressive against the Germans was rivalry for jobs and
status in the local wooden ware plants. The native whites felt
definitely crowded for their jobs by the entering German
groups and in case of bad times had a chance to blame the Ger-
mans who by their presence provided more competitors for the
scarcer jobs. There seemed to be no traditional pattern of prej-
udice against Germans unless the skeletal suspicion against all
outgroupers (always present) can be invoked in its place.
Similarly, the prejudice, violence, and negative stereotyping di-
rected against Chinese immigrants in the United States fluctuated