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Race Relations
363
ciety that the “kingdom beyond caste” can be most fully manifest
“upon earth as it is in heaven.” It is for this reason that the Christian
rejoices in the progress which is being made in this direction, although
the progress itself is frequently painful. For this reason the churches
generally have seen an opportunity for the fuller realization of equality
and genuine community in the new possibilities created by the Su
preme Court decisions relating to abolition of segregation in the
schools as well as in many other areas of public life.
THE ROOTS OF PREJUDICE
The person who is seriously interested in helping reduce racial
prejudice and discrimination must seek to understand as fully as
possible the roots of these evils. In this effort the Christian can learn
a great deal from the social sciences.
Although there have been attempts to account for the rise of
prejudice and racial discrimination in terms of a single causal factor
such as economic forces or historical circumstances or the need for
a scapegoat, there is a general consensus among students of prejudice
that no single explanation is adequate. As yet, the roots of prejudice
are by no means fully understood; but a growing body of sociological
and psychological evidence tends to show that many factors in the ex
perience of the individual contribute to the development of prejudiced
personalities and many factors in our society contribute to the dis
criminatory behavior of persons who themselves have little or no
prejudice. It is important, therefore, that the many sources of preju
dice and injustice be understood so that the struggle to reduce them
may be waged as effectively as possible.
In
The Nature of Prejudice
Gordon Allport describes six different
approaches to the etiology of prejudice.26 Each, he believes, il
luminates a different dimension of the subject, but all of these ap
proaches must be taken together in order to understand the pattern
of causation involved in prejudice and discrimination. In the first
place, there is the
historical
approach which seeks to explain the rise
of these ills in terms of the distinctive history of a particular region.
Thus, it is sometimes argued that the racial attitudes of Southern
whites are the result of the system of slavery and the bitterness that
was produced by the reconstruction policies imposed upon the South
26 Allport,
op. cit.,
ch. 13.