Prejudice

When the knight Lancelot arrived in the city, enslaved by the cruel Dragon, he, to his surprise, heard about the kindness of the Dragon. First, during the cholera epidemic, the Dragon, breathing on the lake, boiled water in it. Secondly, he saved the city from the gypsies. “But the Roma are very nice people,” said Lancelot. "What do you! Horrible! Exclaimed the archivist Charlemagne. - I, however, in my life I have not seen a single gypsy. But I was still in school, that these people are terrible.

This tramp by nature, by blood. They are the enemies of any state system, otherwise they would have settled somewhere, and would not have wandered to and fro. Their songs are devoid of masculinity, and ideas are destructive. They steal children. They penetrate everywhere. ” Please note: Charlemagne himself did not see the Gypsies, but their bad qualities cause him no doubt. Even the real Dragon is better than the mythical gypsies. By the way, the source of information about the "gypsy threat" was none other than Mr. Dragon himself ...
The anti-fascist tale of E. Schwartz very precisely fixes the connection between political despotism and racial discrimination. Prejudices against “outsiders”, rooted in society, becoming the norm of social behavior, divide people, distract their attention from fundamental social problems and thus help the ruling classes to retain their power over people.
What is the nature of ethnic prejudice? Are they rooted in the characteristics of individual psychology or in the structure of social consciousness? How are they passed down from generation to generation? What are the ways and conditions to overcome them?

These questions are very complex, and we do not pretend to the completeness of their coverage, nor to the finality of the conclusions. As the main object we take the United States of America. First, it is the leading capitalist country. Secondly, in it racial and national problems are particularly acute. Thirdly, progressive US scientists have long and thoroughly investigated these problems, and (although, as we will see, many concepts of bourgeois sociologists, psychologists and ethnographers are one-sided or false), the material accumulated by them, if viewed from a Marxist position, has great scientific value.
Of course, in different countries these problems are different. American authors are most interested in Negro and Jewish issues. But what is reliably established in this case may, with appropriate adjustments, contribute to understanding more general problems.