This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!
There are very few words in dictionaries beginning with X but here is one you can get your teeth into…
Xenophobia – is it an instinct?
A little scout on the internet quickly reveals how debatable the subject of Xenophobia and its mechanisms are, almost as intractable as Nature v. Nurture and this is because we are in the same area of research v. belief. It is very hard to devise experiments that conclusively deal with instinct partly because you cannot create or find control subjects who have not been “taught”, however unconsciously, certain biases.
What we do know, is that babies have no undue reactions to babies of other races or colour, and, experimental psychologists claim, adult subjects shown photographs of all sorts of people, react more to different age groups than to different colour or ethnicity.
The philosopher Karl Popper said that it didn’t matter how you came up with a scientific theory, it was how you tested it that counted – and that since you can never establish something to be true everywhere, you were better to try and disprove a theory rather than prove it and thus find yourself in possession of something true for the time being… So he disagreed with the ideas of Freud and indeed all psychoanalytical theory because it was impossible to falsify. Einstein’s theories on the other hand, accounted for some of the flaws in the reigning Newtonian physics and so could be accepted for a time (they too have now got holes in and physicists are looking for theories to replace them…).
So perhaps it is not possible to get a definitive answer as to whether xenophobia is an instinct and focus instead on how it plays out in humans.
Is Xenophobia a choice?
If it’s difficult to screen out the teaching of xenophobia to infants then we must examine how that teaching takes place and for sure, it ranges from very subtle and unconscious biases that even good liberals may not be aware of as they raise their children, to raging bigoted indoctrination by other less liberal parents. Then again, it is not just parents who can consciously foster xenophobia – you only have to look at the exploitation of baseless, even non-sensical prejudice against immigrants in the ongoing Brexit debacle where just last week, vegetable pickers were being flown into the UK which has apparently voted against freedom of movement. What were the first actions of Trump upon election – the banning of Muslims traveling from certain countries, playing to the xenophobia he had stoked up in his election campaign? Of course, immigrants are always a handy distraction from politicians’ own failings be they management or putting their hand in the cookie jar.
Who are the ones that choose to teach their children hatred? They can be the wronged and downtrodden or the perpetrators of oppression. In Northern Ireland, partition took place to create six counties where the majority were Protestant and the minority, Catholic. The Protestants abused their power, “Catholics need not Apply” notices in job adverts, Catholic areas allowed to become slums, etc. So Catholics taught their children to hate the “Prods” whilst Protestants had to demonize the Catholics who remained a threat to them – if for no other reason than that their birth rate is higher and they will one day be in a position to vote for the reunification of Ireland.
Who chooses to oppose xenophobia? Liberals for sure, and they are usually prosperous enough not to be threatened by the alleged or actual consequences of high levels of immigration – their children not so likely to attend schools where multi-ethnic classes might reduce the academic standards. But also those who have learned better in life to trust and choose better.
Popper opposed Communism for the same reason as he opposed psychoanalysts – because he saw their beliefs as untestable, as matters of belief and thus choice. I believe that we should hold firm to this understanding that xenophobia is a choice, disproving the theories which its proponents push forward, for whatever spurious reasons and choosing instead to work together as human beings. If the present Covid 19 crisis has taught us nothing else – it is surely that together is strong, sharing is best in a common enterprise to beat the virus…