Author: JVT038
Date: 19-01-2022
Tags: school, English, essay
Xenophobia is the irrational fear of strangers. It causes people to act suspicious, vigilant, and sometimes even hostile towards others. One could even argue wars have been caused due to this phenomenon. In this essay I will discuss what xenophobia is, what influence it has on people, and how it affects our society. In the conclusion, I will be summarizing this essay, and state my own opinion on this subject.
When people have to choose between familiar things and new, strange things, they're more likely to be favourable to the known. This is caused by xenophobia, and can lead to prejudice, and sometimes even (unintentional) racism. For example, according to the realtor analysis of 2019 mortgage data, people of colour are more likely to be denied a mortgage. When I started thinking about what may have caused this mindset, one of the things that came to mind were evolution. Imagine, you're living with a tribe, and suddenly another tribe comes in and attacks you! You flee, to live another day, but you'll be cautious the next time you meet a stranger, in case the stranger attacks you as well.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is throughout history people have been suspicious of each other, and it may have started somewhere in the era of hunters and gatherers. Perhaps the people back then regarded 'outsiders' a bigger threat than the people they already knew. It could be considered a defence mechanism, as they're trying to protect themselves from strangers. They taught their children to be scared of outsiders, and later their descendants will be cautious of strangers, because their parents warned them about it. This corresponds with the Five Monkeys Experiment.
Short summary: There is a cage with monkeys, with a banana hanging in the centre. When a monkey tried to reach the banana, all monkeys were sprayed with water, and when an old monkey gets replaced with a new one, the new monkey will also try to reach the banana, but will be stopped by the old monkeys, because they're afraid to get hit. When all old monkeys get replaced by new ones, all the new monkeys don't touch the banana, because they are 'taught' not to do so, however they don't know why.
And I think the same principle happened with human evolution; parents have taught their children to be scared of foreigners, or perhaps it has become a cultural thing, where entire tribes, civilizations, and groups are naturally cautious, because they had been attacked once, by strangers.
A good example of this, is what happened at Easter Island. When the Dutch discovered it, they were greeted by a very hospitable population, whom had never met any strangers before. While, on the other hand, at Sentinel Island, the current population attacks anyone in sight, and will not hesitate to plant a spear in your body if you go sightseeing them. This hostility that has lasted until this very day, is probably caused by the arrival in 1880 of a British navy officer called 'Mauri Vidal Portman'. Basically, he abducted Sentinelese children, did some gross and perverse things with them, and then returned them. It's likely the Sentinelese have decided to attack any stranger approaching their island, as they are scared of another thing like this happening again. The Sentinelese who were there when Portman arrived, probably told their descendants to attack strangers, to prevent another 'Portman incident'. And their descendants told their own children, who told their own children, etc. The same happens with the 5 Monkeys Experiment, where the new monkeys have never experienced what happens if you grab the banana, yet they will not touch it, and stop others from touching the banana. So a possible cause for xenophobia is that it is a cultural thing, where it's a part of the culture to not let any outsider integrate into it, because the civilization had once had a stranger abducting their children, and molesting them.
The consequences of xenophobia are pretty wild. From just a bit distrust, to prejudicing other people, to despising different groups, to actually committing a whole genocide, such as the Armenian genocide or the Holocaust. A major political and social consequence for example, was the apartheid in South Africa.
From the 1940s up until the 1990s, South Africa was on the brink of a civil war. The white farmers had developed a huge antipathy towards the black people, and vice versa. Apartheid had been enacted, and things such as interracial marriage was outlawed. The American psychologist Gordon Allport travelled through South Africa in 1953, and asked himself the question. 'How do you reconcile two sworn enemies?'. After years of research, he had come to a simple conclusion: Contact. Simply contact between the various groups in South Africa should be able to fix the issue. Allport suspected the (negative) prejudices that white Africans had about people of colour, had evolved due to a lack of contact with black Africans. When military general Constand Viljoen founded the right-winged political party 'Afrikaner Volksfront' (AVF) with 3 colleagues in 1993, he immediately assembled a huge following. His supporters, which were hundreds of thousands, were planning to attack their rival party, which was African National Congress (ANC), lead by Nelson Mandela. While tensions were running high in South Africa, and a civil war seemed inevitable, Viljoen's brother, who was a supporter of ANC, contacts him, and suggests he personally meets with Nelson Mandela, and Viljoen agrees. This is the beginning of the negotiations between right extremists and Nelson Mandela. They ultimately decide to lay down arms, and to hold fair elections, and Viljoen's brother managed to avert a civil war, simply because the leaders of ANC and AVF talk. Gordon Allport sadly didn't live long enough to witness these miraculous events. His apprentice, Thomas Pettigrew, had documented all of Allport's work, and published his findings about the 'intergroup contact theory' as it was later called, in an article called 'A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory'.
So from this story, I can conclude the prejudice, apartheid, and all racial inequality in South Africa, was simply caused by xenophobia, as less contact created prejudice and racism, while more contact creates a feeling of fraternity. The intergroup contact theory also applies to racist Trump supporters, or anti-immigration Brexit voters; when someone lives in an area less culturally diverse, they're more likely to vote for Trump, or to vote in favour of the Brexit. Simply because they didn't have enough contact with other cultures, and they were caught by xenophobia.
In media, examples of xenophobia can be found in Harry Potter, where the wizards look down on the muggles, despite the wizards and muggles almost never interacting. Or A Song of Ice And Fire, where The North is culturally xenophobic, as they have had some traumatic experiences with outsiders; The Mad King burning a couple of Starks, or Aegon the Conqueror forcing Torrhen Stark to bend the knee, and swear fealty to him. In The Witcher, Geralt initially dislikes monsters, because he's trained to do so, but when he meets Regis, a vampire, his outlook on his monster hunting career changes, and at the end, he even decides to quit his job as a Witcher. In Percy Jackson and The Heroes of Olympus, the Greeks and Romans are initially suspicious of each other, and the intergroup contact theory can definitely be applied to them, as the Greeks and Romans haven't had contact in centuries. And funnily enough, Hera's solution to the rivalry between the Greeks and Romans, is contact. Literally contact. She teleports the protagonists (Jason and Percy) to the opposing camps. Perhaps Rick Riordan has heard about Gordon Allport?
Anyway, today, in the 21st century, xenophobia is unfortunately very present. An example is the fear of Muslims, or the Islam in general. After the terrorist attacks, executed by self-proclaims 'Muslims', a phenomenon, called 'Islamophobia' began to spread throughout Western society. Perhaps it could be considered to be an extension of xenophobia, considering the people who're scared of Muslims, probably don't know any Muslims personally, and have a view on Muslims based on the things they see on TV, and they're basically afraid of strangers who look Arabic. The Islamophobes are scared of something they don't know. They don't exactly know what 'Islam' actually means, or what Muslims are like in real life, and when they see things like the terrorist attack in Paris, they will develop an inaccurate view of the Islam.
In conclusion, xenophobia can be caused by various things. Some might say it's an involuntary defence mechanism, while others could argue it's cultural, for any kind of reason. And most of the time, it all starts by lack of contact with strangers. A lack of contact with Muslims, with Jews, with people of colour, or any other (ethnic) group can lead to prejudice, and prejudice can lead to hate, and hate can lead to extreme situations like the 1990s in South Africa, where the country was on the verge of a civil war. In the media xenophobia is portrayed in countless books, and in the 21st century, xenophobia is right there on your television! Just kidding, but I think it's safe to say the best solution to this universal, and scary problem (haha, please laugh), is to get in touch with a person with an unknown background. This can be a person of colour, a Jewish person, a Muslim, whatever. If you find out all of your prejudices are wrong, you're more likely to be less xenophobic, and perhaps make new friends! And if you happened to be right, well, I feel so sorry for you getting in touch with anti-vaxxers :(