Page 347 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 329

dency for a frustrated individual to lash out at the cause of his or her
frustration. Frequently, however, the cause of a person’s frustration is
either too big or too vague for direct retaliation. For example, if a 6-
year-old boy is humiliated by his teacher, how can he fight back? The
teacher has too much power. But this frustration may increase the
probability of his aggressing against a less powerful bystander—even
if the bystander had nothing to do with his pain. By the same token,
if there is mass unemployment, who is the frustrated, unemployed
worker going to strike out against—the economic system? The sys-
tem is much too big and much too vague. It would be more conven-
ient if the unemployed worker could find something or someone less
vague and more concrete to blame. The president? He’s concrete, all
right, but also much too powerful to strike at with impunity.
The ancient Hebrews had a custom that is noteworthy in this
context. During the days of atonement, a priest placed his hands on
the head of a goat while reciting the sins of the people. This symbol-
ically transferred the sin and evil from the people to the goat. The
goat was then allowed to escape into the wilderness, thus cleansing
the community of sin. The animal was called a scapegoat. In modern
times, the term scapegoating has been used to describe the process
of blaming a relatively powerless innocent person for something that
is not his or her fault. If people are unemployed or if inflation has de-
pleted their savings, they can’t very easily beat up on the economic
system—but they can find a scapegoat. Unfortunately, the victim is
not allowed to escape into the wilderness but is usually subjected to
cruelty or even death. In Nazi Germany, the scapegoats were the
Jews; in 19th-century California, they were Chinese immigrants; in
the rural South, they were black people.
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Otto Klineberg has described the scapegoating of the buraku-
min, a group of some 2 million outcasts scattered throughout Japan.
They are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, in
which people who worked in occupations considered “tainted” with
death or ritual impurity (such as executioners, undertakers, or leather
workers), lived in their own secluded ghettos. They were legally lib-
erated in 1871 with the abolition of the feudal caste system, but dis-
crimination against them did not end. Although they do not differ
physically from other Japanese, they are considered unclean and fit
only for certain undesirable occupations. The burakumin usually live
in poor, slum areas, and their IQ scores are, on average, some 16