Blunting Prejudice and Sharpening Conviction

November 17, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: The Free Church in the Changing World

III Education and Liberal Religion
9. Blunting Prejudice and Sharpening Conviction


Although my guess is that an impressive majority of all Americans would agree that prejudice is bad and must be replaced by acceptance and understanding, my observation is that when it comes down to solving problems of prejudice now, or acting to correct long-standing injuries now, the majority dwindles to a minority. When it comes down to cases, the theoretical majority passes by on the other side.

To deal with this gap between ideals and action is appropriate for the series on "The Free Church in the Changing World." Specific in our stated allegiance to the dignity of every human individual, and both explicit and implicit in nearly every utterance of individuals and groups within the liberal churches is the belief that improvement of the individual and the human order in society unite[s] free individuals in a religious enterprise such as ours.

Permit me to re-iterate that because I believe the rapid achievement of full civil rights and integration is the giant issue in the United States, it is of crucial importance to blunt the jagged edge of prejudice which has wounded us sorely. It is vital also to sharpen the edge of conviction, to the end that we may cut through irrelevancies and side-issues.
I believe that integrated education, and correction forthwith to racially imbalanced public schools, is a necessity for the privileged as well as the deprived.

I believe that discrimination in employment opportunities must cease, not only to meet the needs of the economically disinherited, but also for the health of that fortunate part of our society which is affluent.

I believe that obvious and subtle barriers to open housing must be dissolved, not only for the family which seeks relief from wretched living quarters, but also for the lucky family which enjoys adequate housing on an orderly street which has a touch of green and seasonal color splashes of fragrant blossom and flower.

I believe that comprehensive civil rights legislation is a pressing necessity now, not only for those discriminated against, but also for those millions whose lives have never felt the blows of bigotry when seeking a lodging for the night, the franchise to vote or the opportunity to participate in education on the basis of equal opportunity.

In spite of the untroubled sleep of most the privileged, prejudice damages everyone. I would like to tell you why I believe the virus of prejudice spares no one; how prejudice can be blunted by knowledge and experience; and how convictions about our world and our selves can reveal new visions of hope and spur gains for the whole human enterprise.

What is prejudice? Prejudice is using distorted evidence to convict without trial. Prejudice is pronouncing judgment without examining all facts which are available and relevant. Prejudice is the emotional support for actions which cause or maintain discrimination against minority groups. Prejudice is feeling superior to members of a minority group when our minds concede that such feeling has neither moral justification nor biological basis.

Prejudice is much more than a program subject for sparsely attended forums. Prejudice tests us to disclose whether the American dream is sincere or hypocritical; prejudice checks the authentic nature of our American constitutional values in the glaring light of a world stage. Prejudice examines with harsh realism the proposition whether a nation "so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."

Prejudice exists—what causes it?

One of the great modern musical shows was "South Pacific." One of the songs describes the origin of prejudice:

"You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year;
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught."

Babies are not born with prejudice. This is learned in society. Persons who are prejudiced against a particular minority group usually nurse that harmful feeling because it conforms to the social atmosphere in which they grew up.

Why should prejudice be a part of the social environment when it is not natural to life itself? Right here is the most difficult reality for us to accept. Somewhere in his book, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, James Baldwin describes the vicious effects of the white man's prejudice against the Negro and Mr. Baldwin says something to the effect, "He discriminates against me and keeps me down because he needs to."

Among the most weakening personality deficiencies are insecurity and a feeling of being inadequate to deal with what life presents to us. We are threatened by a feeling that we are not stable in our place in society, that our perch on the occupational ladder is shaky, that we are not certain we have the love and esteem of other persons. In his important book, PREJUDICE AND YOUR CHILD, (p. 81), Dr. Kenneth Clark summarizes the findings of many scholars in his field (psychology), "Adolescents and adults who are struggling for security and positive self-esteem may often take the easy way out by finding someone to look down upon. Encouragement of this discourages the more difficult task of having to build individual self-esteem by solid and realistic personal achievements."

In the struggle for his place in the pecking order, man, because he is the creature of emotion as well as mind, frequently attempts to justify himself by disqualifying others from the pleasure, privileges and status to which he aspires.

Then too, the human being takes his wrath and frustrations out upon others. Look at the old myth of Cain and Abel. Cain brought the harvest of the fields as a gift to the Lord, but this offering was rejected in favor of Abel's lambs. That would shake a man wouldn't it? Think of the fear and insecurity generated when a man is rejected by his God. That terrible feeling could not be contained; it had to be expressed. Cain projected his feeling on Abel in the form of hate. Cain killed Abel. He found a scapegoat. So do many persons find scapegoats.

We learn also that harsh discipline and rigidity of personality can develop unbearable hostility in a person. The social scientist reports that there is "evidence that parents who are primarily pre-occupied with their personal status and parents who impose harsh and rigid forms of discipline are likely to fasten in their children intense prejudices toward individuals of another race and religion." (Clark, p. 27) The authoritarian personality is frequently found among those who deliver the blows which violently express prejudice; write the unjust laws of segregation; apply ordinances far more cruelly on a minority than on the favored elite majority.

Even such summaries as the foregoing of the nature of prejudice would be dreary and pointless chastisement of a favorite target – our inner self – if nothing could be done about it. If there were no ways that man could secure a turnabout on his prejudices, we would just have to settle down to endure unhealthy and unhappy ways in our social and occupational life, waiting for a tired world to end, either "with a bang or a whimper."

But there is so much that we can do in this country, if we have the will, that there is just no excuse for dumb resignation; no warrant yet for violent reprisal.

We can blunt prejudice by recognizing that it exists; and that its causes are found both in our social order and in our personal immaturity. We can face up to Gunnar Myrdal's classic epitome of his long study, THE AMERICAN DILEMMA, "there is a gulf between the American ideals of democracy and brotherhood on the one hand, and the existence of racial prejudice, discrimination and segregation on the other."

We can blunt prejudice by facing with candor that discrimination and second-class citizenship, because of color, creed or national origin are a mockery, not only of the principles which led to our constitutional government, but also the principle of the supreme worth of human personality which we claim as a religious foundation. "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man sows, that he will also reap"; justice is working out in history; there is a certainty of just retribution for sin. Some of that phraseology is archaic, but the consequences of the social sickness of prejudice are as real as steel, wood and pavement.

We can blunt prejudice by preventing its harmful actions, even though there are many who seem either unconvinced or disinterested. One of the most wide-spread half-truths common in our times goes something like this, "you can't legislate prejudice out of people's hearts." Perhaps not, but civil rights legislation in areas of housing, public accommodations, voting, jobs can prevent bigoted persons and groups from expressing prejudice in ways that deprive minorities of their rights and liberties. But more than that, opportunities for the experience of integration, of congregating with, living and working side-by-side with minorities previously rejected and excluded dissolves prejudice in the best way — knowing first hand that one's fears were not only irrational, but also that getting rid of the feeling is an accomplishment of personal growth.

Civil Rights legislation is needed simply on the basis of fair play. For this reason alone, every concerned person should maintain the pressure of letters and telegrams to the President, Senators, Representatives to write strong civil rights legislation and enact it. The chances seem dim right now for speedy action, but generation of wide support from the grass roots might make lackadaisical legislators turn on more power. Perhaps we cannot make great reductions in prejudice this year; but under a government of law, we can make deep cuts in segregation. Once contacts are established, the natural affinities between people who go to school together, go to work together, live in the same neighborhood, go to the same churches will exert influence and contribute to the breaking down of the divisive walls of prejudice. There will be a complexity of influences pulling the whole family together, if the bigots are deprived by legislation of opportunities to perpetuate inequality and discrimination.

But we have chances to walk an additional mile. Not only can we blunt prejudice, we can sharpen conviction.

We can sharpen conviction by an act of recognition. That act of recognition is to understand and to accept the reality that (in the words of Richard Hofstader) "the great political questions are in their final analysis, great moral questions."

Politics can appear to be frustrating and uninviting — smoke-filled rooms, chicanery, hocus-pocus on issues, fence sitting, ward-heeling. We say, "you can't fight City Hall," and then we retire from the fray with many complaints, ready to take our ease. But when it comes home to us, as it surely must, that civil rights — and other issues as well — are not just situations for politicians to manipulate, but more vitally, issues of right and wrong which call for our choice, then conviction must sharpen.

Think about the persons you admire most — whether they are famous like Moses, Jesus, Paul, Francis, Luther, Governor Bradford, Jefferson, Lincoln — or whether your thoughts touch persons known only to you and a few others — Did not these persons you admire deal with difficult issues, intricate situations by evaluating them as situations of right and wrong? When they did this, sometimes having to make the choice of lesser and greater good as well as lesser and greater evils, did not conviction sharpen?

It might be observed that persons who see the big problems as issues of personal right and wrong are also the persons whose inner nature seems founded on rock, not sand. If you would be strong within, remain faithful in your outward statements and acts to the decisions of right and wrong which were hammered out on the anvil of your own conscience.

We can sharpen our conviction by seeing ourselves as persons, who by the blessing of the human life instinct are capable of being adequate to what life puts upon us. We need no false and bitter security achieved by behaving toward minorities as if they were inferiors. We don't need to establish self-esteem by unfair scrambling, with tooth-and-claw for a more exalted place on the ladder of status. We believe in the dignity and worth of every human, including ourselves. To live in conscious possession of our human dignity, and to see ourselves that way, will sharpen our convictions about right and wrong.

Then, too, we can sharpen our convictions by the associations we choose. The social scientists state with considerable assurance that most prejudice against minority groups arises not from contact with the persons of a minority group, but from contact with ideas about minority groups. If you maintain allegiance to and contact with groups distinguished by greater freedom from prejudice, then you will find your convictions about the worth of all persons strengthened. The social atmosphere in which you choose to move will either strengthen your convictions about the brotherhood of man or make your prejudices deeper and more lasting. The greater degrees to which you associate with all persons on levels of equality in situations where you function as a working, social or civic individual, the much stronger will be your convictions about the rightness of equality of opportunity for all, and the wrongness of segregation and discrimination against anybody.

In summary then, we blunt prejudice by recognizing what it is and how it is caused, by ignorance of others; caused by conflicts within ourselves; by recognizing the values to be achieved by integration, even when the immediate situations have to be established by civil rights legislation.

We can sharpen conviction by recognizing that these crucial issues of integration and segregation are not just political and economic, but are issues of right and wrong, personal to every one of us, a test of whatever religion we profess; by seeing ourselves as persons adequate to our conflicts and problems; persons who need not find a contrived self-esteem in a false sense of superiority; by recognizing that our stability as persons has a fundamental relationship to being actively faithful to the values we believe; by deliberately choosing some associations which will strengthen our commitment to the goal of one recognized human family.

President Paul Dixon of Antioch College designates the way civil rights are now being promulgated in this country as a new evangelism. That term may be more appropriate than he indicates. For it is good news, but the good news of the equality of individuals is a story that is being told by massive effort, but in non-violent effort to an amazing degree.

Just as the good news of the first century reached out against what seemed to be impossible odds, so the effort to overcome the effects of prejudice is reaching for a difficult goal in our generation. You will find many opportunities to argue particular merits of the multiple aspects of the problem, but the questions you may have to answer only to yourself, but perhaps always to yourself, "did I see the age only as one of trouble and nuisance or did I see it as one where I was called to choose the right in a decision of right and wrong?" As time goes by, what will our answer be to ourselves when the insistent conscience prods, "which side was I on?"

[Editor's note: see comment indicated below. Extant copy of sermon reads "President Paul Dixon of Antioch College" but it seems likely Rev. Westman erred, and was referring to President James P. Dixon of Antioch College, who appears to have served the school from 1959-1975. Thank you to the commenter for pointing this out.]