Page 353 - The Social Animal

Prejudice 335

pressed fear of his or her parents. Yet another explanation, from stud-
ies of identical twins reared apart, 73 is that certain elements of the
“authoritarian personality”—notably a resistance to change, novelty,
and new experiences, and a preference for rules and order—have a
genetic component. Children would then resemble their parents be-
cause of nature, not nurture.

Prejudice Through Conformity For some people, prejudice
may be rooted in unconscious childhood conflicts or personality
traits, but many people simply learn a wide array of prejudices by
conforming to the lessons they learn on Mommy’s or Daddy’s knee.
Others may conform to prejudices that are limited and highly spe-
cific, depending upon the norms of their subculture.
It is frequently observed that there is more prejudice against
blacks in the South than in the North. This prejudice manifested it-
self in strong attitudes against racial integration. In 1942, only 4 per-
cent of southerners were in favor of the desegregation of
transportation facilities, while 56 percent of northerners were in
74
favor of it. Why? Was it because of economic competition? Prob-
ably not; there is more prejudice against blacks in southern commu-
nities where economic competition is low than in northern
communities where economic competition is great. Are there rela-
tively more authoritarian personalities in the South than in the
75
North? No. Thomas Pettigrew administered the F scale widely
throughout the North and South and found the scores for northern-
ers and southerners to be about equal. In addition, although he found
more prejudice against blacks in the South than the North, there was
less prejudice against Jews in the South than in the nation as a whole.
The prejudiced personality should be prejudiced against everybody,
and the southerners in Pettigrew’s study weren’t.
How then do we account for the animosity toward blacks that
exists in the South? It could be due to historical causes: The blacks
were slaves, and the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery,
creating the climate for greater prejudice. But what sustains this cli-
mate? One possible clue comes from the observation of some rather
strange patterns of racial segregation in the South. One example,
concerning a group of coal miners in a small mining town in West
Virginia, should suffice. 76 The black miners and the white miners
developed a pattern of living that consisted of complete integration