Moulay Ismail University Subject 

: Extensive Reading
School of Arts and Humanities Class : S3
Department of English Instructor : Prof. Malika Khandagui
Meknés

ROOTS OF ETHNIC CONFLICT

Ethnicity can be expressed in peaceful multiculturalis, or in discrimination or

violent inter-ethnic confrontation. Culture is both adaptive and maladaptive. The
perception of cultural differences can have disastrous effects on social
interaction. The roots of ethnic conflict can be political, economic, religious,
linguistic, cultural, or « racial ». Why do ethnic differences often lead to conflict
and violence ? The causes include a sense of injustice because of resource
distribution, economic or political competition, and reaction to prejudice or
discrimination.

Prejudice and Discrimination

Ethnic conflict may arise in the context of prejuduce (attitudes and judgments)
and/or discrimination (action). Prejudice means devaluing (looking down on) a
group because of its assumed behavior, values, abilities, or attributes. People are
prejudiced when they hold stereoptypes about groups and apply them to
individuals. (stereotypes are fixed ideas – often unfavorable – about what the
members of a group are like.) Prejudiced people assume that members of the
group will act as they are « supposed to act », according to the stereotype. They
interpret a wide range of individual behaviors as evidence of the stereotype.
They use this behavior to confirm their stereotype (and low opinion) of the
group.
Discrimination refers to policies and practices that harm a group and its
members. Discrimination may be practiced, but not legally sanctioned. An
example is the harher treatment that American minorities tend to get from the
police and the judicial system. Such unequal treatment isn’t legal, but it happens
anyway. Segregation in the southern United States and apartheid in South
Africa provide two examples of discrimination, which are no longer in
existence. In both systems, by law, blacks and whites had different rights and
privileges. Their social interaction (« mixing ») was legally curtailed. Slavery is
the most extreme form of legalized inequality ; people are treated as property.
We also can distinguish between attitudinal and institutional discrimination.
With attitudinal discrimination, people discriminate against members of a group
because they are prejudiced against that group. For example, in the United
States, members of the Ku klux Klan have expressed their prejudice against
blacks, Jews, and Catholics through verbal, physical, and psycological
harassment.
The most extreme form of ethnic discrimination is genocide, the deliberate
elimination of a group through mass murder. The United Nations defines
genocide as acts  « committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnical, racial, or religious goup, as such ». Genocide has been
directed against people viewed as « standing in the way of progress » (e.g.,
Native Americans) and people with jobs that the dominant group wants (e.g.,
Jews in Hitler’s Germany). In Africa, in the late 1990s, the countries of Rwanda
and Burundi have witnessed genocidal conflict between groups known as Tutsi
and Hutu. The difference between Tutsi (the numeric minority, but
socioeconomically favored stratum) and Hutu is one of different social strata,
rather than language, « race », or culture. Civil wars have ravaged Rwanda and
Burundi after generations of intermarriage that make physical contrasts between
Tutsi (stereotyped as taller) and Hutu all but indistinguishable.
Institutional discrimination refers to laws, policies, and arrangements that
deny equal rights to, or differentially harm, members of particula groups.
Historical examples, already mentioned, include South African apartheid and
segregationist policies in the American South. Both those forms of institutional
discrimination treated blacks as lesser citizens with fewer rights and protection
under the law than whites enjoyed. Another, less formal, example of institutional
discrimination is called environmental racism : « the systematic use of
institurionally based power … to formulate policy decisions that will lead to the
disproportionate burden of environmental hazards in minority communities ».
Thus, toxic waste dumps tend to be located in areas with nonwhite populations.
Environmental racism is discriminatory but not always intentional.
Sometimes, toxic wastes are deliberately dumped in areas whose residents are
considered unlikely to protest because they are poor, « disorganized », or
« uneducated ». In other cases, property values fall after toxic waste sites are
located in an area. The wealthier people move out. Poorer people, often
minorities, move in, to suffer the consequences of living in a hazardous
environment.