Inner world of racist

So, what is the inner world of the most prejudiced people - for brevity, we will call them racists, although many of them do not at all share racial theory in the generally accepted sense of the word?
Needless to say, to understand the psychology of vigilantes, thugs, fascist thugs is not a pleasant job. But, according to the apt remark of one writer, microbes do not become more dangerous because the microscope magnifies them. In the mind of a person educated in the spirit of internationalism, it does not fit how you can hate others for their skin color, nose shape or eye shape. When you remember the horrors of Auschwitz or the bloody anti-black terror of American racists, you involuntarily think: this cannot be, people are not capable of such things are some kind of pathology! And yet, this was and is. And not as an exception, but as a mass phenomenon.
In his play on Auschwitz, Peter Weiss writes:
... And the executioners and prisoners were ordinary people: a lot of people were delivered to the camp, a lot of people delivered to the camp - some brought others, but these and those were people. Many of those who were meant to play the role of prisoners. grew up in the same world as those who fell for the role of executioners. Who knows, many, if fate had not appointed them to the role of prisoners, could have become executioners ...
No, this, of course, poetic exaggeration! People are not puppets, and not everyone is suitable for the role of executioner. But how can a normal person become not an executioner, but his accomplice? Fiction has repeatedly revealed in many different aspects of this process. Let's see how he looks in the light of psychology, and we’ll consider not “extreme” cases, not those who commit atrocious atrocities, but “simple”, “ordinary” racist, on whose conscience there are no crimes. He simply does not like blacks, or Jews, or Japanese, or Irish, or all of them together. Why? How does he understand this? And what does he not understand?
Usually, people prejudiced against an ethnic group are not conscious of their bias. They are confident that their hostile attitude towards this group is quite natural, since it is caused by its bad qualities or bad behavior. They often back up their reasoning with facts from personal contact with people of a certain nationality: “I know these Mexicans! We had one such, no sweeter with him! .. "
Of course, the reasoning is devoid of logic: no matter how unpleasant the familiar Mexican, there is no reason to think that everyone else is the same. But, despite the absurdity of such reasoning, it seems understandable - people often make unfounded generalizations, and not only in the sphere of ethnic relations. Therefore, some bourgeois sociologists argue that ethnic prejudices arise primarily from unfavorable personal contacts between individuals belonging to different groups. Although this theory has been rejected by science, it has a wide circulation in everyday consciousness.
Usually the case is presented as In the process of communication between people, different conflicts often occur and negative emotions arise. When conflicting individuals belong to the same ethnic group, the conflict remains private. But if these people belong to different nationalities, the conflict situation is easily generalized - a negative assessment of one individual by another turns into a negative stereotype of an ethnic group: all Mexicans are, all Japanese are.
No doubt, unfavorable personal contacts really play a part in the fact that prejudices arise and become fixed. They can explain why this prejudice is more pronounced in one person and less so in another. However, they do not explain the origin of prejudice as such. Children raised in racist families show a high degree of prejudice against blacks, even if they have never met a black man.
The inconsistency of the individual psychological explanation of prejudice was proved by the experience of the American sociologist J. Hartley. He interviewed a large group of average Americans - people of not particularly high cultural level - about what they think about the moral and other qualities of various nations. Among the nations he listed were three that never existed at all. No one has ever had any personal unpleasant encounter with Danireans. There were no grandmother’s fairy tales or history textbooks telling that three centuries ago there was a war with Danireans, during which they were very atrocious, and that in general Danireans are bad people. There was nothing of this. Nevertheless, the opinion about these fictional groups turned out to be sharply negative. Nothing is known about them, but there is no doubt that they are not good people.
The personal experience of the individual is not the cause of prejudice. As a rule, this experience precedes and largely predetermines it - a stereotype. Communicating with other people, a person perceives and evaluates them in the light of his installations. Therefore, he is inclined to notice some things and not to notice others. This idea is well illustrated by the observation of the famous Russian linguist Baudouin de Courtenay - M, Gorky quotes his words in The Life of Klim Samgin: "When a Russian steals, they say:" He stole a thief, "and when he stole a Jew, they say:" He stole a Jew. Why? Because in accordance with the stereotype (Jewish rogues) attention is fixed not so much on the fact of theft as on the nationality of the thief.
Once a person selects his own impressions, it is easy for a prejudiced person to find examples confirming his point of view. When his personal experience contradicts the stereotype, for example, a person who is convinced of the intellectual inferiority of blacks, meets a Negro professor, he sees this fact as an exception. Cases are known - when ardent anti-Semites had friends among Jews; The logic here is very simple: the positive assessment of an individual only underlines the negative attitude towards the ethnic group as a whole.