Stereotype, Prejudice, Discrimination

Moscow, 1998

On a relatively cold evening in 1998, I was walking down a street in the south-west of Moscow. My hands were inside the pockets of my bluish jacket. A large vehicle stopped next to me. Before I realized what was happening, two Russian policemen pointing guns alighted and ordered me to raise my hands. As soon as I complied, they rushed towards me, twisted my hands behind, and handcuffed me.

“Заткнись!”  (Rude translation of Shut Up), said the blue-eyed, blond policeman as I tried to say something. They made me walk with them to a building nearby. It had a room which they used as a makeshift police station. The taller man frisked me in a humiliating way. He asked me to remove my jacket and realizing I couldn’t do it with my hands shackled behind, took off the handcuffs.

Once I removed the jacket, he took a pair of sharp scissors and unceremoniously cut its entire lining. Vigorous shaking of the jacket convinced him there were no drugs hidden inside. By now, I became bold enough to take out my “accreditation card” and give it to them. The Russian policeman glanced at it briefly before giving me the torn jacket and letting me go, without so much as a simple ‘sorry’.

Warsaw, 1999

A few weeks later, my employer, British American Tobacco, said they were transferring me to my next posting, Warsaw. Nothing to do with the incident above. I had been in Russia for too long. I went to Warsaw on a two-day look-see visit. Before I left Warsaw, one of the directors there told me that the Polish management would prefer to have a Polish guy take the position offered to me. It was nice meeting you, but sorry, we would prefer a local guy.

Over the next few months, BAT’s Polish directors tried everything to stop my transfer. But BAT’s head office was in London. After lengthy arguments between London and Warsaw, six months later, my going to Poland was officially announced. With a compromise: I should prove myself in the first six months. If not, the Polish management had the right to replace me with a Polish guy.

In the first two months, the Polish management tried to make my life miserable in every which way. I was refused a three-room apartment I chose, though a British guy a level below me was given a two- story house. The justification was that he had three kids and I none. The Polish Board hurriedly met and passed an emergency policy change to link the size of the flat to the size of the family.

I scientifically devised and sent across Poland a price-list for our products, part of my marketing job description. I was made to retract it, because it would upset our competitors.

UK, 2003

I moved to the UK after Poland. On two occasions, English boys, complete strangers to me, called me “Paki” in my face.

*****

Stereotype, prejudice and discrimination  

Psychology textbooks talk about stereotype, prejudice and discrimination.

Stereotype is our pigeonholing the behavior of a whole class of people. This can be positive, neutral or negative.

Women are emotional, men are rational, French are romantic, Muslims are dangerous, Jews are intelligent and business-minded, Americans laugh too loudly, British are hypocrites, Asians are dirty, Africa can’t produce chess grandmasters –these are examples of stereotyping.  

Prejudice is, as a rule, negative. “Women are emotional” is a fairly neutral statement. That stereotype may be positive or negative depending on the context. But “women are bad drivers” is a prejudice. The prejudiced person knows that every woman drives badly.

Discrimination is a step further than prejudice. It is acting based on the prejudice. A bank chairman thinks a male CEO is needed to run the operations of the giant bank. That is his prejudice. As a result, he rejects all female candidates (despite politely talking to them) and appoints a man as a CEO. That is discrimination because the activation of the prejudice has been unfair to some.

Yesterday, Trump announced names of six more countries, including Africa’s most populous Nigeria, as part of the US travel ban. Prejudice against those nations clubbed each and every citizen into one pigeonhole- BAD. Ban them from travelling to the USA. This is an example of a state-sponsored racial discrimination.

My experiences

In light of these definitions, let me analyze the three experiences I narrated earlier.

I was a perfect stranger to the blue-eyed, fair-skinned, Russian policemen with Slavic features. They could have mistaken me for a Chechen, or simply assumed that a dark man with dark hair and dark eyes must be carrying weapons and/or drugs. This was their prejudice and they acted on it. I consider myself a decent, respectable person. Certainly respectable enough not to be handcuffed without reason. However, my features were part of a stereotype that was not respectable from the viewpoint of the Russian policemen.  

In Poland, the discrimination against me by the Poles stopped after three months or so. After interacting with me on a daily basis, they realized I didn’t fit the stereotype. I was far more experienced and competent than any local candidate they had in mind. It’s possible some Poles didn’t like me, but that was no longer a class-prejudice. Once I began speaking with them in Polish, they gradually forgot I was a foreigner. My promotion happened without anybody discussing my six-month probation.

This is the difference between judging a class (stereotype) versus judging an individual. The visa process is a good example. US and Europe institute visas for Indians as a result of racial prejudice. But through the detailed visa process, they assess an individual. Based on that assessment, visas are issued to individuals. Trump’s blanket ban is anti-individual.  

Coming to my UK experience: Paki.  Those Brits who use that racial slur can’t distinguish between Indians and Pakistanis. I would say they are giving vent to their prejudice. The true spirit of democracy allows you to hate anyone, and true freedom of speech allows you to insult anyone. Racial slurs are prejudice-driven; by themselves they are not discriminatory.

There is a noteworthy difference between the racial discrimination I experienced in Poland and Russia. The discrimination practiced by the Polish Directors of the company was private- not state supported. They could harass me, but not handcuff me.

In Moscow, the Russian uniformed policemen handcuffing me were State supported. On that day, suspicion could have also prompted those militiamen to kill me. And nothing serious would have happened to them.

This is the reason the State-sponsored discrimination is the most dangerous, most lethal. Because the state can arrest, imprison or kill any person with impunity – even in a democratic state.

USA and Japan

I will give a historical example of State-sponsored racial discrimination by quoting a passage from a book.  

The Japanese, all American patriots knew, were Apes, monkeys, reptiles, insects, mice, rats, vipers, rattlesnakes. The slogan was: Good Japs are dead Japs. … General Slim, veteran of the Burma campaigns, reckoned that the allies had kicked over an ant-hill (another name for Japan)… now was the time to stamp on them.

While the US and other Allied armed forces were comprehensively exploiting plain racism in confrontation with Japan, thousands of innocent Japanese-Americans were being incarcerated in concentration camps in the United States. The “treacherous Japs” in America could not be trusted: If America was at war with Japan, only one course of action was possible. Congressman Ford of California represented a common view, maintaining: “that all Japanese, whether citizens or not, be placed in inland concentration camps…

There were no signs that the American-Japanese were about to pose a security threat to the United States in the Second World War, but this very lack of evidence was a damning circumstance. Thus the US army issued its conclusive judgment: the very fact that no sabotage has taken place to date is a disturbing and confirming indication that such action will be taken.

By 11 August 1942, some 110,000 Japanese in America had been forcibly removed from their homes and businesses and confined in transitional concentration camps before final relocation in permanent ones. The result was racial harassment and abuse, the break-up of families, suicide, the collapse of businesses, and the demoralization and despair of the ethnic Japanese in the United States.

[Vietnam Syndrome by Geoff Simmons (pgs 126-127)]

As we know well, America not only imprisoned 110,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, it pulverized more than 200,000 innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb; Harry Truman, the US president who ordered the strikes, Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, the pilots who dropped the bombs, and majority of the American population were overjoyed after killing 200,000 Japs. This is what state-sponsored war hysteria does. State discrimination legitimizes imprisoning and killing an ethnic group.

*****

Today, USA and Japan are close allies and partners. People of the two countries view one another favorably.  Japanese cars and consumer electronics are particularly popular in the USA. USA takes care of Japan’s defence.

What does this tell us? That nothing is intrinsically wrong with any race or religion. State-supported discrimination and war hysteria are capable of poisoning sane minds. Prejudiced citizens are willing to support their state’s discrimination campaign. Empowered, the state can arrest, imprison and kill innocent people in thousands.

Political prejudice

Prejudice and discrimination based on race, religion and gender are well-known. I would like to add a new 21^st century category to it: Political prejudice.

“Oh my god, how could he vote for Brexit? I thought he was of a sound mind.”

“I saw his FB posts on Modi. I can’t believe he is the same person I knew for so many years. I have unfriended him.”

“Fox News should be banned. It’s a Trump channel. How can they be so biased?” and so on.

The Political prejudice of the 21^st century is inflamed by social media. Earlier we were not aware of the opinions of our friends, family members on political issues. For decades, communities could enjoy life without discussing politics. Now FB and WhatsApp have given everyone a platform. Opinions are visible. Hate groups can be formed quickly. Halo and horn effect have gripped the population. Meaning if I love Modi, then everything he does is good, and if I hate him, everything he does is nasty. Not only that, if I love Modi, everyone I love must love Modi as well. If they hate Modi, I must start hating them. This is the modern political prejudice.

There is no human being without prejudices, neither you nor me. Because we can’t always control our brain. If it wishes to create a stereotype, or a prejudice, we can’t stop it. But we don’t need to act on our prejudices. Unless we lose our minds (which happens when minds are brainwashed), we can control our actions. By not acting on our prejudices, whatever they may be, we avoid discrimination.

Termites

India’s home minister has so far called the Bangladeshi illegal immigrants “termites”. That could have been discounted as election rhetoric or personal prejudice. But now with the introduction of the CAA-NRC-Detention camps package, that prejudice has been converted into State-Sponsored Discrimination.

Applied history tells us that unless such discrimination is nipped in the bud, it eventually leads to intense hatred, war hysteria, concentration camps, and massive destruction and casualties.

Ravi