Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that antipathy toward one minority usually combines with prejudice toward other “outsiders.” Disdain for Jews goes along with contempt for blacks. Various scapegoats are manufactured interchangeably. Often they are blamed simultaneously. Even if “Bolsheviks” and “capitalist exploiters” share nothing, the conspiratorial mind lumps them together as causes of misery, without bothering with the contradiction. Yet racism shows many faces. Where several targets and potential “enemies” can be manufactured into threats to national survival, some are more, others less discriminated against. The cultural characteristics or the behavior of the minority hardly influence such selective stigmatization. Ethnicity is never the cause of antagonism, only its vehicle and demarcation.