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Prejudice

or, why we aren't as right as we think we are

14/9/01

Prejudice is self-perpetuating.

In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the reaction of a lot of people is to demand vengeance on those who, it seems, perpetrated the attacks - namely Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban regime that shelters him.

I even heard one american say "The middle east should be bombed into a red-hot glowing mass - they're all terrorists or terrorists-to-be out there."

This, of course, is blatant prejudice. But you can understand where it comes from - a significant proportion of the terror attacks that are publicised on the news are perpetrated by islamic fundamentalists, and you don't get to hear about much else from that area in the news.

Now look at it from the other point of view. In an attempt to curb terror attacks from the middle east, the US has on more than one occasion bombed middle eastern countries. On one occasion, they sent in cruise missiles in an attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden - on another, they bombed a pharmaceutical factory (which may or may not have been producing nerve gas).

Stop, think, and imagine. Imagine a middle eastern submarine came, without warning, to the shores of your country. And fired a missile or two that blew up a factory near your house, killing a handful or people. They then claimed that it had been used by a terrorist organisation. Can you even begin to imagine the uproar that this would cause in the west? Yet the middle eastern countries are expected to put up with it. Is it any wonder that their populace are restless and demand vengeance against the country that would do these things? Their prejudices against the west are well-founded.

So occasionally, some of the more extremist and inflammatory citizens of the middle east do take the law into their own hands, and commit acts of terror against the west. Which only increases the west's prejudiced view of their entire race as terrorists.

And then, the west swears vengeance, and threatens to bomb all hell out of the country whose citizens commited the terror attack. Which, in turn, increases the arabic prejudice against the west.

Thus is prejudice self-perpetuating.