Updated: 6 May 2013
As a part-time teacher, teaching psychological and sociological approaches to Prejudice
& Discrimination, every year I find myself confronted with this question from one
or more of my A-Level students.
With posters on some Internet discussion forums making statements like: “I think
Nick Griffin [British National Party] is only saying what most people think but are
too afraid to say”, it seems appropriate to me to revisit the students’ question
from an Integrated SocioPsychology perspective.
It’s explaining Henri Tajfel & John Turner’s Social Identity Theory (1979) in relation
to the formation of in-groups and out-groups that usually triggers the student’s
question as to whether racism is natural. In essence, Tajfel & Turner say that, simply
by identifying yourself with one group as opposed to another, your group becomes
the in-group and the other becomes the out-group.
According to Tajfel & Turner, this basic act of social categorisation - one group
has one identity label and the other group has a different identity label - is enough
to bring about prejudice and discrimination. Because we invest something of our self
in the groups to which we belong, we need our in-groups to be at least equal to and
preferably superior to the out-groups (social comparison) for the sake of the self-esteem
we have invested in our membership of our group. Even if our own group is deficient
in some respects, there must be some ways in which we can demonstrate superiority
over the out-group(s). Thus, for example, some of the worst violence amongst football
fans takes place when the fans of a team in a lower division attack those following
a team in a higher one. It’s almost as if, because their team is not superior on
the field, they can at least try to be superior in a fight.
Tajfel & Turner’s ideas have been used to explain all manner of conflict. They help
to understand:-
- (obviously) violence amongst rival groups of football fans, as per 2009’s murderous
clash between Millwall vs West Ham
- the lingering traces of hostility between Yorkshire and Lancashire more than 500
years after the Wars of the Rose
- the easily-triggered antipathy between the English and the Scottish
- in part, at least, the ‘Little Englander’ opposition to the ‘European project’
- in part, at least, the resentment of northerners towards southerners
- in part, at least, the antipathy of Catholics and Protestants towards each other
and similar hostility between Shi’ites and Sunnis
and, of course
How much our sense of identity is tied into the labels our groups have can perhaps
best be illustrated by the fact that anyone with the name of Singh is usually assumed
to be an Indian Sikh whereas someone with the name of Khan will be a Pakistani Muslim.
Such labels are used to identify members of your in-groups and those who are in the
out-groups.
Tajfel & Turner’s observations of the effects of identifying with a group and categorising
yourself as part of that group have been supported by many other psychological and
sociological studies. Sense of identity and the need to identify with a group are
the critical elements in in-group and out-group structure. It’s interesting that
Nick Griffin, in outflanking the Equality & Human Rights Commission’s 2008-2010 actions
against the British National Party (BNP), has got the BNP to talk in terms of identity
rather than explicitly about race. Under the amended BNP constitution, it is your
declared sense of identity (eg: ‘British’ or ‘English’ rather than ‘Asian’ or ‘Pakistani’),
as well as explicit support of the party’s policies, which will determine (theoretically)
whether an applicant could be admitted to membership.
So it seems we have a need to categorise ourselves into groups and to adhere to the
norms and values of the group (social identification).Thus, if the values and norms
of the group include racism, the members of the group are likely to reflect that
in their own avowed beliefs.
Explaining the need to belong
What Tajfel & Turner’s model doesn’t do, however, is tell us why we have this need
to belong to groups.
For that we have to turn to the work of Abraham Maslow and Clare W Graves. Maslow,
in his famous Hierarchy of Needs (1943, 1970, 1971) - listed Belonging as the most
basic need after Survival and Shelter. We display this need to Belong in the way
we talk about ‘our family’, ‘our team’, ‘my mother’, ‘my father’s son’, ‘my wife’,
‘my wife’s husband’, ‘my cat’s owner’, ‘my employer’, ‘my employer’s employee’, etc,
etc…these are all terms describing relationships in terms of belonging to someone
or something...or of them belonging to me. When I ask my students who they belong
to, they almost always say “No one!” - accompanied often with the dismissive arrogance
of 17-year-olds! However, once I start describing myself as “my father’s son...my
wife’s husband...my stepdaughter’s stepfather...my cat’s ‘daddy’...your teacher because,
in this respect at least, I belong to you”, they begin to get it.
So, if at a pretty basic level we define ourselves in terms of who we belong to and
who belongs to us, it’s perhaps no surprise that Maslow saw Belonging as a foundation
for Esteem. An illustration of how critical Belonging is for Esteem is illustrated
in the fact that many people go through a period of at least mild Depression, with
accompanying feelings of worthlessness, when a relationship ends. That is, of course,
unless they have someone else to move on to - ie: a new Belonging which often boosts
self-esteem.
So, if Belonging is a foundation for Esteem, that explains the need to join with
others - eg: groups - and the fact our self-esteem is then tied in to the success
of the group.
Of course, not everyone commits to belong to someone. Clearly hermits prefer to live
on their! However, the numbers of such people in relation to the general population
are very small indeed. Not everybody needs to belong to quite the same degree. People
high in the temperamental dimension of Intraversion and those already high in self-esteem
are less likely to need the social acceptance that comes from belonging to a group.
Graves (1978/2005), a correspondent of Maslow’s, took his ideas further through some
25+ years of painstaking research. Graves came to see Maslow’s ‘needs’ as being driven
by motivational systems or coping systems responding to the ‘life conditions’ someone
is experiencing. In the Spiral Dynamics construct (1996) developed by Don Beck &
Chris Cowan from Graves’ work, these motivational systems are termed ‘vMEMES’ and
colour-coded.
Graves’ research led him to collapse Maslow’s second and third levels into one. This,
in Spiral Dynamics, is the PURPLE vMEME which seeks safety in belonging. Thus, it
is the need for safety which drives us to belong and to find acceptance from those
we wish to belong with.
As Tajfel & Turner observed, when we identify ourselves with an in-group, we absorb
their norms and values so that we become like them’
The ‘tribalism’ Desmond Morris (1977) famously wrote about is the result of this
seeking safety in belonging. Effectively the PURPLE vMEME motivates us to seek and
belong with those who are like us in some way so that we - banded together as a tribe,
the in-group - can stand together against the out-groups. Whether as true Amazon
jungle-type tribes or close families or gangs of football fans, tribalism is fundamental
to all groupings of human beings. And, once you identify with a group, it very easily
becomes our tribe vs your tribe.
Thus, to distinguish between your tribe and another tribe by whatever means, including
colour of skin, religion or any other marker of difference is natural when the PURPLE
vMEME is dominant. You might call a particular form of demarcation - ie: by colour
of skin - ‘racism’ and declare it illegal but the fact is that it is natural to differentiate
your tribe from others. Racism per se is not the problem; it is the need to differentiate
between who you belong to and who you don’t.
Paul Shaw & Yuwa Wong (1989) propose that the mechanisms that promote suspicion
and fear of those not-of-our-tribe would have been favoured by the processes of natural
selection - see: Basics of Evolutionary Psychology - while David Sloan Wilson (1975)
explains that such fears and suspicions would be adaptive as they would enable ‘our
tribe’ to avoid or at least defend themselves from attack by the strangers’ tribe.
Wilson writes that xenophobia has been documented in “virtually every group of animals
displaying higher forms of social organisation”. If we work from an Evolutionary
angle, then it is clear that PURPLE’ s drive to find safety-in-belonging is underpinned
by BEIGE’s survival motif.
The biological workings of this suspicion and/or fear of difference have been demonstrated
on a number of occasions in recent years - most notably by William Cunningham et
al (2004). Through the use of fMRI scans, they found increased activity in the amygdala
when white Americans went from seeing photos of white American faces to photos of
black American faces. The amygdala can be loosely described as the emotional centre
of the brain and is particularly tuned to sense threat. Hence, it seems our biology
is adapted to see difference as threatening.
If differentiation is adaptive and natural - and sometimes manifested as racism -
the challenge then is to find ways of managing the demarcation between the tribes
in ways which benefit society as a whole and meet the needs of all as far as possible.
That there is a distinct possibility of mediating this differentiation comes from
the work of Elizabeth Phelps et al (2000) who found that elevated amygdala activity
was significantly greater in whites viewing photos of black faces if they already
held negative attitudes towards blacks. In other words, while there may be natural
drivers to differentiate racially (tribally), there are cognitive and social factors
influencing the degree of differentiation. Memes about ‘others’ become schemas and
mediate (increase or decrease) the adaptive response of fear produced by that differentiation.
And this is the kind of answer I give to my A-Level classes…who seem to understand
exactly what I am saying.
Why then the fuss about racism?
So why isn’t it obvious to everyone that it’s not really racism but tribalism that
is the problem?
Here we have to look at Spiral Dynamics’ sixth vMEME, - GREEN - the Aesthetic level
in Maslow’s (revised 1970/1971) Hierarchy.
GREEN is the great equaliser. Its way of thinking is to see the worth of everybody
and to treat them as equal. Historically, there was a great explosion of GREEN thinking
in the 1960s – at its zenith in the hippie movements. Feminism, support for disabled
people, equality for gay men and lesbians and, of course, anti-racism are all products
of the GREEN way of thinking. The very concept of social comparison - my tribe is
better than yours - is anathema to GREEN.
GREEN is a much more complex way of thinking than PURPLE but, in its enthusiasm for
egalitarianism, it tends to ride roughshod over PURPLE’s concerns for tribal safety.
While it’s something of a rough and ready measure, this helps to explain why the
intellectualised leaders of the Labour Party, often driven by GREEN in their thinking
in these things, have so often been out of touch culturally with the PURPLE tribalism
of a great many of the working class people they ostensibly represent when it comes
to the issue of race.
Thus, GREEN uses the BLUE vMEME to enforce its egalitarian ethos via legislation
in as many areas of discrimination as it can. (Thank goodness that way of thinking
is at last tackling ageism!)
Thus, GREEN’s values don’t allow it to see the tribal concerns: quite simply everyone
is equal – whatever your colour, creed or nationality and we should all help each
other to get the best out of life. Yet these values are simply mysterious and unfathomable
to the less complex PURPLE way of thinking.
Racism, like homophobia, simply cannot be countenanced by GREEN’s egalitarian way
of thinking yet both racism and homophobia are endemic in many working class communities
where PURPLE thinking tends to dominate. Quite simply: they’re not like us so they
can’t be part of our tribe. Often the more deprived the community, the more extreme
the racism and/or homophobia.
GREEN is determined to stamp out racism (and homophobia) because both state that
people are not equal. (My tribe is superior to yours.) Yet it is fighting something
which is natural at the PURPLE level of thinking.
Tribalism and competition
One of the ways Graves improved upon Maslow’s model was to link the emergence of
the motivating systems (vMEMES) to the ‘life conditions’ being experienced - either
internally as in your biology or what is happening in your external environment.
In the pre-Spiral Dynamics Graves Model, letter pairs were used to denote the life
conditions (A-M) being matched by the motivating system (N-Z) for psychological health.
So what happens when the life conditions become adverse to the tribe? How does that
affect the functioning of the motivating systems? Muzafer Sherif et al’s Robber’s
Cave study (1954/1961), in which two tribes of young boys were artificially created
by categorisation and identification – ‘Rattlers’ vs ‘Eagles – and then set against
each other in competition, is probably the most infamous psychological study to look
at such effects. (William Golding reputedly took his inspiration for his acclaimed
1954 novel ‘LORD OF THE FLIES’ from Sherif.)
When tribes are set against each other, in competition for resources especially,
then you can reasonably expect the in-group/out-group effect to magnify. As the life
conditions become more difficult, the threat to the welfare of the tribe consolidates
the tribe’s sense of singular identity and hostility towards other competing tribes.
Marilyn Brewer & Donald Campbell (1976), in their famous study of East African tribes,
demonstrated clearly a strong positive correlation between the degree of competition
for vital resources and the level of prejudice & discrimination experienced - eg:
the closer another tribe was to a waterhole on which your tribe depended, the more
animosity your tribe felt towards the other.
When the UK entered recession in 2008 a number of commentators predicted a rise in
racism and support for extremist political groupings like the BNP. The substantial
increase in electoral support for the BNP 2008-2010 and the sudden and very powerful
emergence of the English Defence League (EDL) and their ilk tells us clearly that
those commentators were onto something. However, the large-scale racially-motivated
violent clashes that some had predicted did not occur. This may be because the worst
effects of the recession - and the possible complete meltdown of the British economy?
- were staved off by the Labour Government’s extended public borrowing. The successor
Coalition Government, though, has been determined to reduce the resultant Public
Sector Deficit via the most severe ‘austerity measures’ endured by a British electorate
since the late 1940s and the extension of post-war rationing. At the time of writing,
there are major indicators that the Coalition’s austerity measures are not working
yet - see the Blog post Have David Cameron and George Osborne ruined Britain?. While
there have been protests, politically-motivated large-scale public order offences
and outright riots - see the Blog post The Riots: who’s right - Cameron or Blair?
- such activities do not seem, so far at least, to contain any element of racial
conflict.
Judging from rapidly-increasing electoral support for the UK Independence Party,
as evidenced from their significant gains in the May 2013 local elections, a substantial
element of that xenophobic energy Wilson identified seems to have largely coalesced
into anti-European sentiment.
However, only occasionally being caught by the media’s radar - such as the 6 al-Qaeda-inspired
Muslim fanatics who attempted to bomb an English Defence League rally in Dewsbury
last June (and were convicted last month) - there is near-constant low-level activity
by white extremist groups like the BNP and the EDL while a disturbing number of immams
use their mosques to spread hatred of ‘corrrupt’ Western values and the unbelievers
who oppress their ‘brothers’ amongst vulnerable Muslim young men. Blacks, meanwhile,
are stereotyped by both extremist whites and extremist Asian Muslims as lazy, unintelligent
and ruthless. The number of gang/drug-related killings in places like London and
Birmingham would seem to indicate at least some blacks are trying to turn the stereotype
into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
With resources (jobs and money) more and more in short supply, competition between
the tribes is likely to increase substantially. In such a context, the predictions
for large scale racially-motivated violent clashes may yet come true. Tom Whitehead,
writing in the Daily Telegraph about the failed Dewsbury bombing, worries that Britain
is on the verge of an all-out race war, citing EDL leader Tommy Robinson as saying:
"God forbid it happening…but I think we have our fingers on the pulse and if something
like 7/7 happens this whole country is going to go up."
While Whitehead may be sensationalising the situation to boost sales by creating
a moral panic, competitive pressures are very likely going to exacerbate natural
tensions. The UK’s ethnic minorities are predicted to grow by around 3 million in
the next 5-10 years, increasing competitive pressure on limited resources and facilitating
the extremists gaining ground in all tribes. To really get to grips with what may
happen, we need to reframe the debate in terms of tribalism rather than racism and
develop effective strategies for managing that tribalism.
