totalitarianism today

Amalgamated musings on Gordon Allport's contact hypothesis.

Damak, Nepal by W.F. Korner.

Most of the shameless racists I know have a "black best friend". I used to hold this simple fact against Gordon Allport's contact theory. Upon closer study, however, the BBF defense can also be construed as a validation of Allport's theory. It all depends on whether you take the BBF claim to be rooted in good intentions.

For example, it's not a secret that many television shows use the BBF to maximize the racial diversity in their programs. In most cases, the credit for the BBF must go to the profit motive. However, given that BBF's in mainstream media expose more children and adults to interracial friendships, the end result might be a positive one, a normative environment in which interracial friendships are considered to be prevalent and natural. 

Gordon Allport's contact hypothesis (a.k.a. Intergroup Contact Theory) holds that, under appropriate conditions interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. If one has the opportunity to communicate with others, they are able to understand and appreciate different points of views involving their way of life. As a result of new appreciation and understanding, prejudice should diminish. 

Intergroup conflict is spurred by stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination between competing groups. The competition these days is over identity more than shared resources or economic goods. Allport believed that properly management of contact between competing groups should reduce these problems and lead to better interactions.

But there are more and less intractable conditions for conflict- namely, anxiety and negative interaction. In situations where contact creates anxiety for participants, intergroup contact will not cure conflict, Contact situations need to be long enough to allow this anxiety to decrease and for the members of the conflicting groups to feel comfortable with one another.

Similarly, if the members of the two groups use this contact situation to trade insults, argue with each other, resort to physical violence, and discriminate against each other, then contact should not be expected to reduce conflict between groups. To obtain beneficial effects, the situation must include positive contact. The profitable offices of marital therapists come to mind. 

Power lines in Damak, Nepal by W. F. Korner.

REQUIRED READING: "Formation of Ingroups" by Gordon Allport

In a 2010 study, she found that Serbs who had regular and meaningful interactions with Muslims were more likely to acknowledge that their countrymen were responsible for genocide—more support for Allport’s contact theory. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Damak, Nepal by W.F. Korner.

Subsequent research has broadly supported Allport’s ideas, with a special emphasis on the importance of his first requirement – activity that goes beyond mere goodwill. Specifically, the thinking now prioritizes the pursuit of “super-ordinate goals” – goals compelling to both parties to a conflict that cannot be achieved by any one party alone. (Peace Players International)

The dry season in Damak, Nepal by W. F. Korner.

Thinking about migrants and migration may be cognitively difficult, but doing so may be highly beneficial. In fact, this makes a lot of sense given what we know about human adaptability. After all, we're biologically pre-disposed to like high-fat, high-calorie foods but that's hardly a recipe for a healthy life. Similarly, sticking just with what we know - never opening the mind to the experience of other cultures and customs - is a route to rigidity, conservativism, and narrow-mindedness. We may be cognitively pre-disposed to like simplicity, structure, and coherence, but it's people who break the mould who prosper most. (Psychology Today)

School in Damak by W. F. Korner.

On Salon, Brittany Cooper muses on the "politics of being friends with white people". I appreciate her candor:

I have always been skeptical of white people who claim that “one of my best friends is black.” Internally my response has always been, “They may be your friend, but are you their friend?”

I believe deeply in the power of friendship to make us better human beings. But interracial friendships, especially in adulthood, require a level of risk and vulnerability that many of us would rather simply not deal with. And that is perhaps one of racism’s biggest casualties: Beyond the level of systemic havoc that racism wreaks on the material lives of people of color, in a million and one ways every day, it reduces the opportunity of all people to be more human.

Germany and Korea: A case for comparisons.

Jean Granville calls attention to the fact that US policymakers did not predict Germany's reunification and asks us to consider the possibility of a similar scenario in Korea. I quote at length because I find her argument to be quite interesting and outside of the boring boxes in which most foreign policy discussions take place:

The truth is that Germany’s division was only made possible by the Soviet occupation. But it lasted long enough to look like the normal state of things, just as Europe’s division did. Most people, including the experts, were completely unable to imagine any other situation. Days before the Wall was opened, as thousands of East Germans were already pouring to the West through Hungary, the division of Europe was still thought of as unshakable. And let us not even mention the Soviet Union.

The mental process of rationalization played its part. All kinds of reasons such as those mentioned above were used to justify this state of things. A world without the Eastern Bloc, the Soviet Union and the GDR was so difficult to imagine that it had to be justified by more than the Soviet occupation.

Finally, a Sovietless world was also seen as very frightening. There were some good reasons for that, but overall, most people were essentially conditioned to accept the political order as it was. Wishing for it to change was seen as unrealistic and irresponsible. This is probably the main reason why the Cold War wasn’t exactly won by the West: the West didn’t want to, or at least most people seemed to view some sort of negotiated settlement as much more preferable than what finally happened.

Except maybe for the Germans who revealed themselves as much keener to reunify than they had previously seemed. Backed with huge support by Germans from both sides of the former Iron Curtain, Kohl was able to play his part very efficiently. He made it very clear that he was asking for Soviet permission essentially out of courtesy. What he gave in exchange for the Soviet agreement was a symbolic face-saving concession: the recognition of the Oder-Neisse line as the German-Polish border. So both Germany and the Soviet Union conceded on matters they couldn’t do anything about, and the matter was settled.

There are essentially two lessons here. First, totalitarian regimes hide their weaknesses well. East Germany had no substance, only Soviet tanks were keeping it together, but the West didn’t see it. Likewise, the Soviet Union fell apart much more easily than anyone would have thought.

Second, no one knows when a totalitarian regime will fall apart, and no one can do much about it. During the final phase of the Cold War, Western powers essentially did their best to keep the Soviet Union in place. They supported Mikhail Gorbachev any way they could, ignored Yeltsin until the August 1990 coup, and failed to give much support to the Lithuanian independence movement. The Soviet Union’s demise was a completely autonomous process in which the West played no part.  But the Soviet collapse still took place and no one could do much about it.

This is what makes it particularly silly to keep the same kind of illusions about North Korea today. The Korean peninsula is divided in much the same way as Germany was. Many experts make the same kinds of rationalizations as their predecessors did about Germany: China and Japan don’t want a “big” Korea, the U.S. will want to keep a military presence there (and a divided Korea gives them a pretext), South Korea believes reunification would be too expensive and so on.

That sounds a lot like the mistakes we made in the 1980s. First, these points are not very convincing in themselves. The U.S. doesn’t have any real interest in keeping thousands of soldiers in Korea when they could be very useful elsewhere. China could probably obtain a denuclearized Korea if reunification took place. Japan may be pleased not to be the only democracy standing up to China. And how in the world could South Korea not want to get bigger when it is facing neighbors like China and Japan? As for the economic costs of uniting two Koreas, they will be huge indeed, but that will probably not keep 90% of South Koreans and 100% of the North Koreans from demanding reunification.

And most importantly, whose decision will it be? As soon as the North Korean army, for any kind of reason, stops shooting people who try to sneak through the DMZ, the regime will be over and no one will be able to do anything about it. The South Koreans will not likely shoot refugees in order to keep them in the North, so the choice will be between a reunification within South Korea or in the whole peninsula. Plans for a huge humanitarian operation in the North may be devised, as they apparently are, but that will not change the final outcome, which will be the reunification of both Koreas.