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by the North following the Civil War. While it is no doubt true that
a historical understanding of the social forces which provide the
broad context in which personality is shaped sheds light upon the
present-day attitudes of people who live in a particular region, it is
clear that other factors are also involved; for within a single geo
graphical area some persons develop prejudices while others who have
been nurtured in the same general context do not. The different
historical factors involved in Negro-white relations in the South and
in the North should not be lost sight of, but the historical process
does not operate inevitably. As Pope points out, the history of a
region is the story of human choices many of which could have been
made otherwise.27 For example, the present patterns of segregation
in the South were deliberately prescribed by law, and there was con
siderable opposition to these laws among the whites when they were
first proposed.
In the second place, there is the
sociocultural
approach to group
conflict. Sociologists and anthropologists tend to ascribe primary
importance to various social and cultural forces in their analysis of
the etiology of prejudice. Like the historian, they seek to understand
the broad social context in which people develop attitudes of hostility
toward others; but, whereas the historian is more largely concerned
with the historical background of present attitudes and conflicts, the
sociologist ana the anthropologist give greater attention to an analysis
of the dynamic and interlocking character of the cultural forces which
influence social change in different societies. Within the framework
of this approach (which may easily be combined with the historical
approach) some writers stress the importance of the relative density
of the populations involved; others emphasize the effects of a one-
crop agrarian economy and a one-party political system upon the
South; others, the relative upward mobility in in-groups and out
groups; others, the kinds of contacts that exist between the groups
involved; and still others, the importance of industrialization and
urbanization.
The third approach which Allport describes places the emphasis
upon the
situation.
Here the primary concern is with the current
forces which act upon an individual rather than with the historical
background of these forces—with the immediate effects of the situa
tion rather than with an attempt to explain how the situation itself
364
Biblical Faith and Social Ethics
27Pope,
op. cit.,
p. 44.