Search

EARLIER notions of the relation between prejudice and discrimination held them to be closely interdependent. Discrimination, it was often assumed, was practiced by the prejudiced person and could not be eliminated except as prejudice was first removed.' More recent research and theory have been very persuasive, however, in the suggestion that there exists between the attitude of prejudice and the action of discrimination a gap in which a variety of facilitating or inhibiting factors can be interposed. In short, between private feeling and public action there is room for the play of other factors which significantly influence the extent to which feeling will be translated into matching action or will be repressed on behalf of other values. Law, custom, conscience and informal community restraints are the types of factors which can and have been interposed.2 Even the most ardent advocates of legal action will admit, however, that it is questionable how enduring or stable are purely legal restraints in preventing the translation of prejudice into discrimination. Unless deeper commitments oppose prejudices, one must be seriously concerned.3 Yet we also know that prejudice will not easily, if ever, yield to the blandishments of rational evidence. Nor is emotional re-education a feasible public alternative. We are therefore led to seek other factors which may be invoked to help counterbalance the impulses and drives generated by emotionally-rooted prejudices, and which may effectively modify behavior without necessarily altering the prejudices themselves. If these factors are to become instruments of public policy, they must be able to be developed reasonably quickly and at relatively low cost. A clue is given to us by the studies of the impact of formal education upon behavior in a variety of contexts. For the literature is rich with suggestions that as formal education increases there tend to occur noticeable shifts from: (a) nationalism to internationalism, in political point of view; (b) traditionalism to secularism, in general social philosophy; (c) common sense to science, as acceptable evidence; (d) punishment to reform, in penological theory; (e) violence and direct action to law, as agents of policy; (f) rigidity to permissiveness, in child rearing; (g) patriarchy to democracy, in spouse relationships; (h) anesthesia to creativity, in patterns of recreation. A common feature of these changes is that they imply the development of an awareness by the individual that there are: (a) other places than his own locality; (b) other times than the immediate present; (c) persons other than himself and his immediate primary group; and (d) other values he cherishes as ingredients of other aspects of his self. In brief, the individual who experiences these changes has enlarged his perspectives on time, place, person and values. This enlargement, the literature suggests, occurs somehow as a result of pro1 For a thorough review of the major viewpoints, see G. W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1954. For more specialized surveys of related problems, see J. S. Brunner and R. Tagiuri, "The Perception of People" in Gardner Lindzey (ed.), Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 634-654, Cambridge, Mass.: Addison Wesley, 1954; and J. Harding, B. Kutner, H. Proshansky and I. Chein, "Prejudice and Ethnic Relations," ibid., pp. 1021-1061. 2 For analysis of the "vicious circle" and the effectiveness of interpositions at various points, see, for example, R. K. Merton, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy," Chapter VII, in his Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1949; and R. M. MacIver's The More Perfect Union, New York: Macmillan, 1948. 3 The best full-length analysis of the role of law in ethnic relations is Morroe Berger's Equality by Statute, New York: Columbia University Press, 1952. See also his excellent article, "Desegregation, Law and Social Science," Commentary, 23 (May, 1957), pp. 471-477; and his Racial Equality and the Law, Paris: UNESCO, 1954.

T HE SITUATION I wish to report here concerns the pueblo of San Luis Jilotepeque, a small, relatively isolated community in the interior of Guatemala, about go miles from Guatemala City, inhabited, at the time of my studies there, by about 3500 people of whom some i ioo were Ladinos, or people of presumptive Spanish descent, and 2400 of whom were Indians (or mixed-Indian and Ladino) of Maya-Quiche descent.1 Intrinsically, the community is no more nor less significant or interesting than any other community which might be chosen at random. It does have considerable sociological significance of a sort, however, for it represents one of those "Pango-Pango" situations, of which some anthropologists are so fond, because it can be cited as a local exception to some generally prevailing hypotheses. For instance, it is generally agreed that here is a situation of caste-relations between people of different genetic and cultural origins where there is a minimum of conflict. Moreover, the superordinate caste, the Ladinos, are in a distinct numerical minority.

account for observed variations in the relationship of status consistency to preference for change in the distribution of power for different strata.'4 Both lines of interpretation suggested above appear plausible, at least post hoc. It is impossible at present, however, to assess their relevance. On the basis of the findings of this study, and the arguments given, the following specifications for further research can be made. Measurement of status consistency should take into account the extent to which the status characteristics used are likely to be simultaneously salient. Second, the opportunities for alternative modes of adjustment to status inconsistency should be controlled or systematically varied. Third, to test the rationale underlying the hypothesis relating status consistency and preference for change in the distribution of power, it would be desirable to measure the intervening variables assumed to be important, e.g. tendency to locate the sources of discomfort in the environment, and relate these to the independent and dependent variables. These would seem to be minimum specifications for clarifying the relationship of status consistency to preference for change in distribution of power.

for sociable reasons seem more likely to remain with an organization than those who join for other reasons. Whereas there were only 8 '2 per cent fewer persons with an associational tie of five years' standing among those reporting some sociable motivation (47 cases versus 43 cases), there were 50 per cent fewer among those not reporting a sociable motivation (30 versus 15). Since sociable motivations are less frequently observed among persons with poorly crystallized status, their higher drop-out rate in voluntary associations becomes more understandable.

our democracy as a sort of spontaneous cooperative enterprise. If it comes, Latin American democracy, on the other hand, is apt to be achieved rather in terms of a balance between a sort of paternal authoritarianism and an unwilling electorate in a state of permanent potential rebellion. The people, demanding to be led, will set up leaders whose exercise of power will be limited strictly to what he finds-under the permanent threat of revolution-they will permit him to do. It is probably significant that the new constitution of Guatemala will likely safeguard explicitly, and attempt to implement, a "right of revolution." From the point of view of these countries of Latin America, the most difficult problem in achieving democracy may therefore be not its lack of a tradition of what we think of as the "democratic way" but rather the folklike character of the greater part of the population. Before there can be a democratic nation, there must be a nation; before all people can have equal opportunity in the economic and social system, they must be part of one system. These conditions, in Mexico and most of Central America, are not now met. As in a colonial situation, the ruling groups are largely of one cultural tradition, the ruled masses of another. The Few are part of the Great Society, the Many of a large number of different and parochial small societies. It is only the Few to whom democracy is even a stated end, and unlike the native leaders in colonial countries in which outside interference gives impetus to nationalist movements among the folk, those here will have to "incorporate" the masses into the national culture with no help from these masses.