Humans are fascinated by prejudice, and our interest in this topic can easily be seen in our films, television shows, books and plays. Some movies and TV shows attempt to address the issue of prejudice head-on (e.g., Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, American History X). For example, Star Trek broke racial barriers in 1968 when it became the first American TV show to feature an interracial kiss between fictional characters.
However, much of our modern pop culture depictions of prejudice seem to occur in more subtle ways and often these depictions of prejudice come with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. HBO's True Blood, for instance, imagines a world where vampires have "come out of the coffin" and depicts an "interracial" romance between Sookie Stackhouse and the Vampire Bill Compton. The writers of the show smartly use the anti-vampire prejudice as a stand in for the racism and homophobia that currently exists in our society (note that the sign "God Hates Fangs" during the opening credits of the show is just one letter off from a common homophobic slur). This allows the writers to more deeply explore the themes of prejudice without blatantly challenging the audiences' beliefs and making them feel uncomfortable.
But True Blood is not the first show to use a far-fetched story to explore the real underpinnings of racism. Take for example the Geico commercials that are based on the tag line "So easy, a caveman can do it." Because cavemen do not represent a true social group, we are able to watch the commercials and laugh at the ignorant stereotyping the caveman must endure. Or how about the widely successful Broadway musical Wicked, where we learn that Elphaba, the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz, wasn't born wicked but was made wicked after years of being treated different because of her skin color. Because there is not a green skinned race on our planet, we are able laugh at the anti-green sentiments that are flung at poor Elphaba (e.g., when she becomes upset, Galinda says "It seems the artichoke is steamed!") and at the same time, we are able to empathize with her situation.
So how well does our pop culture depict prejudice? Do its depictions bear any resemblance to the effects demonstrated in psychological studies on prejudice? To answer this question, I put together a list of some basic truths about prejudice that have been established by researchers and provided pop culture examples that depict these truths.
1. Prejudice often results from competition for scarce resources
In the 2009 science fiction film District 9, insect-like creatures have become stranded on earth and are being housed in a government camp inside Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens, who are derogatorily referred to by humans as "prawns", are then forced to relocate to a new refugee camp outside the city limits, and this forced removal results in violence and bloodshed. Thus, the film explores the topic of xenophobia (fear of people different from oneself) but instead of fear towards foreigners or racial minorities, the fear is pointed towards an alien race.
If the scenes depicted in the film seem realistic, it is because they are heavily inspired by the real life forced removal that occurred in District 6 of Cape Town, South Africa. District 6 was largely composed of Muslims and Africans and in 1966, the government declared the district was to be a whites-only area. More than 60,000 people were forcibly moved from their homes and relocated to camps outside the city limits. Although the government gave several reasons for the removal, most residents believed that the government sought the land because of its close proximity to the city center and ocean ports. Thus, the racism that occurred here sprung from a competition over land.
According to social psychologist Muzafer Sherif, competition for scarce resources is a primary cause of discrimination and stereotyping within a society. His Realistic Group Conflict Theory stats that whenever groups compete for land, money, jobs, etc., intergroup hostilities occur. Sherif demonstrated this effect in his well-known "Robbers Cave Experiment," conducted at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. In this study, twelve year old boys who were attending a summer camp were divided into two groups (The Rattlers and the Eagles) and were forced to compete with each other for prizes. Within a few days, hostility between the groups erupted: Members of both groups referred to each other as "stinkers" or "braggers", they would hold their noses whenever in the vicinity of the other group, they created derogatory songs about the other group that they would yell at each other during dinner time, and many even refused to eat in the mess hall while the other group was present. In a matter of a few days, Sherif had created prejudice where it had not existed before, and he did it by simply having groups compete with each other for desirable resources.
2. Prejudice is often automatic and implicit
Crash, a film that won the 2005 Oscar for Best Picture, portrays the intersecting lives of a diverse cross-section of LA residents and in doing so, offers a peek into the often unacknowledged undercurrents of racism that exist everyday in our society. But what makes Crash different from other films about prejudice is that is shows how subliminal and passive modern prejudice is. Many of the films' characters hold pre-conceived notions about people of different races and nationalities. These characters quickly put people into categories based on very limited information and then make snap judgments based on these assumptions. For example, when Sandra Bullock's character sees two Black men walking toward her, she grabs her purse. And when a Mexican locksmith comes to her house, she assumes he is a gang-banger because of his shaved head and tattoos and is concerned he will sell her house keys to one of his "homeys". For these characters', their stereotypes are so entrenched in their minds, they are activated automatically and then go on to impact their future decisions in negative ways. The film also displays the fact that prejudice is not black and white, but involves many shades of gray. Characters in the film that appear egalitarian and non-prejudiced also hold stereotypes about various ethnic groups and in one case, this results in a decision that has deadly consequences (e.g., Ryan Phillippe's character shoots his Black passenger when he mistakenly assumes he was reaching for a gun).
According to social psychologists, modern prejudice is characterized by automatic and unconscious expressions. Although the incidence of blatant, explicit prejudice has sharply reduced since the Civil Rights movement, implicit prejudice (prejudice that occurs outside of our awareness) continues to be widespread. We may intend to be fair and treat everyone equally, but underneath our awareness, our minds automatically make connections, activate stereotypes and ignore information that contradicts these categorizations.
For example, Keith Payne demonstrated that people automatically associate Black men with weapons. This association is so strong that when people are subliminally primed with Black male faces (meaning they see the face so quickly they do not consciously realize what they saw), they are more likely to mistake a wrench for a handgun.
Similarly, Phillip Goff and his colleagues showed that people automatically associate Blacks with apes and that this associated can easily be triggered in the most egalitarian of people. In one of their studies, people were subliminally primed with ape-related words (chimp, gorilla) and then watched a videotape of police officers violently subduing a suspect. When they thought the suspect in the video was white, the previously primed ape words had no effect on their judgments of police force. However, when they thought the suspect was black, the people exposed to the ape words thought the suspect deserved the police brutality. They also showed that real newspaper descriptions of criminal cases were more likely to contain animal-relevant language when the suspected criminal was Black (e.g., "pounced on the victim", "attack occurred in an urban jungle"), and the more animal metaphors were used to describe a defendant, the more likely the defendant was sentenced to death. These and numerous other studies show that many Americans are completely unaware of the fact that they hold automatic negative associations about Blacks and other racial minorities.
