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17 December 2010

 

 

As a part-time teacher, teaching psychological and sociological approaches to Prejudice & Discrimination, every year I find myself confronted with this question from one 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 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:-

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 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 16-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 say it is 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.

 

If differentiation is 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.

 

And this was the answer I gave to my Psychology class who seemed to understand exactly what I was 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, are so 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 legislating 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 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 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, determined to reduce the resultant Public Deficit via the most severe ‘austerity measures’ endured by a British electorate since the late 1940s and the extension of post-war rationing. As at the time of writing, the first effects of the Coalitions’ austerity measures are starting to be counted: unemployment was up by 7.9% in November (largely driven by public sector redundancies) and student protests at Government plans for a doubling of university tuition fees - see the Blog ‘Can the Lib Dems get off the torture rack?’ - degenerated into riots and the worst protest violence in the UK since the ‘Poll Tax Riots’ in 1990. You can see clearly the ideas of Tajfel & Turner and Sherif in one group (Students) vs another (the Government) for money to fund higher education (competition for resources).

 

The Coalition Government made clear its hope that growth in the private sector as the UK emerged from recession would offset the unemployment created by the public sector cuts. The risk in this strategy is that the UK’s emergence from recession will be too slow for this to happen, potentially leaving millions facing relative poverty as jobs are lost as benefits are cut and homes are repossessed when people can no longer meet their mortgage repayments. As noted earlier, material deprivation tends to produce extremist political views.

 

With resources (jobs and money) 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. 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 tribalism.

 

Managing Tribal Competition

To be sure of avoiding the kind of large scale, racially-motivated violent clashes discussed above, policy-makers, both nationally and locally, need to adopt a MeshWORK approach, preferably using the 4Q/8L framework created by Don Beck from the work of Ken Wilber. This will enable them to look at the health of each vMEME at a cultural level (Bottom Left) in a given locale as well as considering the impact of key individuals (Top Left).This analysis will enable policy-makers to prioritise appropriate resources to tackle vMEMETIC issues (Bottom Right). A Maslowian principle, reflected in Spiral Dynamics, is that, when lower levels get into trouble, attention needs to switch from the higher levels to resolve the lower level issues - and the lower down the Hierarchy/Spiral the more fundamental the needs are and the more troublesome the problems will be.

 

PURPLE-driven tensions and frustrations, produced by threatening the safety of the tribe, are about as low on the Spiral and as fundamental as you can get!

 

One critical issue that bedevilled efforts at regeneration and developing healthy communities in the latter half of the 20th Century was that policy-makers designed ‘solutions’ based on their values - often related to the BLUE, ORANGE and GREEN vMEMES - rather than those of the people the ‘solutions’ were meant for, particularly where the ‘problems’ were on large council estates or in inner city ghettos. While one must always be wary of generalisations, it is relatively safe to say PURPLE and RED tend to dominate in traditional white working class and closed ethnic communities far more than BLUE, ORANGE and GREEN. Thus, the ‘solutions’, designed from a different value set, tended to have little appeal to the people they were designed for. Thus, successive governments poured huge amounts of money into community regeneration efforts that made little difference and back-to-work schemes that had astonishingly poor take-up.

 

These failures were mostly due to a values mismatch between what’s important to PURPLE and RED and what’s important to BLUE, ORANGE and GREEN.

 

A simple illustration of the complexity of these mismatches, highly relevant to this discussion, is that it’s the nature of PURPLE to believe ‘village gossip’ rather than official bulletins. Thus, the Government can put out all the information it wants about fair distribution of resources but, if ‘Alf’ at the pub says “the Pakis get more benefits than us whites”, it will be Alf who is believed rather than the Government. In the same way many in the poorer Muslim communities will believe the radical imam ranting about ‘institutional Islamophobia’ rather than the Equality & Human Rights Commission reports on success in tackling racism.

 

Thankfully, the ‘Robber’s Cave’ study shows us a way forward in managing tribalism. Sherif et al cooled tensions and minimised conflict between the ‘Eagles’ and the ‘Rattlers’ by giving them challenges of such a critical nature and in such a way that the two groups came to realise that only by working together could they overcome the challenges. This idea has been developed by Samuel Gerner in his Common In-Group Identity Model (1993) - see Prejudice & Discrimination. Gerner’s proposal is that, by creating a common threat, it is possible to bring together competing identities. Eg: gangs of Liverpool and Manchester United fans, who would normally battle each other on the slightest perceived provocation, will roar their support together as ‘Englishmen’ when England play Scotland.

 

Of course, any attempt to create a ‘Common Identity’ will need to be carefully managed and the memes developed which facilitate the concept of working together as the best - or, even, only - way of overcoming the challenges faced by all the relevant tribes. One way of doing this could be for, say, a local authority to convene a ‘gathering of the tribes’ on its patch, where representatives (elders) of each tribe come together to discuss common problems, share ideas and formulate ways of working together. What would it do for community relations if representatives of a white working class community were able to openly ‘borrow’ successful tactics from a Pakistani group and a Bangladeshi group used ideas given them by Poles...?

 

The fundamental principle for any such gathering would, of course, need to be the recognition and acceptance of difference between the tribes..It has to be OK for one tribe to have brown skin and a tradition for their women to wear the hijab headscarf...just as it has to be OK for the men of another tribe to drink large quantities of beer and display a preference for crude tattoos such as ‘Mum’. GREEN’s conceit that there aren’t differences really and that we are all the same needs to be replaced with a complete acceptance of diversity. And, while clearly, aggressive discrimination against another tribe has to be deterred, it also has to be accepted that one tribe will tend to prejudiced against another until they are given good cause to work together.

 

This means policy-makers accepting the unpalatable truth that racism (as a manifestation of tribalism) is natural to PURPLE thinking. Legislation may drive it underground and education may help some people move on to more complex ways of thinking...but, basically, prejudice against those ‘not of our tribe’ is fundamental to our belonging to our tribe (in-group). Else Frenkel-Brunswik (1951, p406) noted: “Some of the trends which are connected with ethnocentrism are thus natural stages of development which have to be overcome if maturity is to be reached.” The essential Maslowian principle is that, only when we are safe, can we move on to higher ways of thinking. So, to use Gerner’s model, we need issues that mean safety can only be guaranteed by the tribes working together.