As we have seen, a person's identity cannot be summed up by just one label. Often, though, we tend to concentrate on limited or distorted aspects. This is because the responses of different human groups to each other are the product of a complicated system of social relations and power. To discover some of the mechanisms at work, we need to examine the role of stereotypes, prejudice and ethnocentrism.
 

Stereotypes

Stereotypes consist basically of shared beliefs or thoughts about a particular human group. A stereotype is an ensemble of characteristics that sums up a human group usually in terms of behaviour, habits, and so on.

The objective of stereotypes is to simplify reality: “they are like that”. Bosses are tyrannical; these people are lazy, those are punctual; the people in that part of town are dangerous – one or some of them may have been, but all?

Sometimes we use stereotypes about the group(s) to which we feel we belong in order to feel stronger or superior to others (or, indeed, to excuse faults in ourselves – “What can I do about it? We are all like that!”). Stereotypes are usually based on some kind of contact, or images that we have acquired in school, through media or at home, which then become generalised to take in all the people who could possibly be linked.

In everyday language, it is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between stereotypes and prejudices.
 

Prejudices

A prejudice is a judgement we make about another person or other people without really knowing them. Prejudices can be negative or positive in character. Prejudice works like a screen through which we perceive any given piece of reality: thus, information alone is usually not enough to get rid of a prejudice, as prejudices alter our perceptions of reality; we will process information that confirms our prejudice and fail to notice or "forget" anything that is in opposition. Prejudices are learned as part of our socialisation process and they are very difficult to modify or eradicate. Therefore, it is important that we are aware that we have them.

To explain this concept more directly it could help to examine how deeply we know all of our friends. We may have different friends for different occasions, for going to the cinema, going walking, helping with homework, playing football, going to concerts. Do we know what music our football friends enjoy? Or do we just guess? Making assumptions is easy and common. If it is that simple to make assumptions about friends, think how easy it is to make false judgments about people you don't know.

Prejudices and stereotypes are schemes that help us to understand reality; when reality does not correspond to our prejudice, it is easier for our brains to change our interpretation of reality than to change the prejudice. Prejudices help us to complement information when we do not have it all.
 

Siang Be demonstrates this process by asking his audience to listen to the following passage:
“Mary heard the ice-cream van coming down the street. She remembered her birthday money and ran into the house”.
We can interpret this passage like this: Mary is a child, she would like an ice-cream, she runs into the house to get some money so that she can buy the ice-cream. But how do we know Mary wants to buy an ice-cream? It’s is written nowhere! Try changing any of the nouns in the passage ('money’ to ‘gun', for instance) and see what happens.
 

Prejudice and stereotypes about other cultural groups

We absorb prejudices and stereotypes about other cultural groups and people, sometimes unconsciously – but they come from somewhere and they serve many purposes:

• to help us evaluate our own cultures
• to evaluate other cultures and ways of life
• to govern the pattern of relationships our culture maintains with other cultures
• to justify the treatment and discrimination of people from other cultures.
   

Ethnocentrism

Our judgements, evaluations and justifications are influenced strongly by our ethnocentrism. This means that we believe our response to the world – our culture – is the right one; others are somehow not normal. We feel that our values and ways of living are universal, the correct ones for all people, and that the “others” are mistaken if their values and perspectives do not immediately align with ours. Mere contact with people from other cultures can actually reinforce our prejudices, our ethnocentric spectacles blinding us to anything but that which we expect to see. Other cultures may seem attractive or exotic for us but usually our view is coloured by negative prejudices and stereotypes and so we reject them.

This reaction of rejection takes the form of closely related phenomena: discrimination, Xenophobia, Intolerance and Racism (in its many forms, shapes and shades). Power is a very important component in the relations between cultures, and these reactions get worse whenever majorities face minorities.

For further details, you might want to explore the chapter on ‘Discrimination and Intolerance’ in Compass.
 

Discrimination

Discrimination is prejudice in action. Groups are labelled as different and discriminated against. They may be isolated, made criminals by laws that make their ways of life illegal, left to live in unhealthy conditions, deprived of any political voice, given the worst jobs or no jobs at all, denied entry to a club or subjected to random police checks.

Discrimination can take many forms, which have by now been recognised by the law and are sanctioned in various ways. The most common forms are:

• Direct discrimination – when someone is treated less favourably than another person in a similar situation and this treatment cannot be objectively or reasonably justified.
• Indirect discrimination – this happens when a rule / policy / law applies to everyone equally, but disadvantages one or more groups, as it fails to take into consideration their particular situation.
• Structural discrimination – is based on the very way in which our society is organised. The system itself disadvantages certain groups of people. Structural discrimination works through norms, routines, patterns of attitudes and behaviour that create obstacles in achieving real equality or equal opportunities. Structural discrimination often manifests itself as institutional bias, mechanisms that consistently err in favour of one group and discriminate against another or others.
   

The Council of Europe has done significant work in the past 30 years to combat discrimination and support member states in taking effective measures to combat discrimination and its consequences.

The European Convention on Human Rights prohibits discrimination in exercising and accessing the rights set out in the Convention (Article 14). Protocol no. 12 of the Convention has introduced a general ban on discrimination.

The European Court of Human Rights has developed significant case law of discrimination cases in the past years. The European Union has also made it mandatory that member states adopt anti-discrimination laws. The “EU acquis” developed by the two institutions and the work done at national level by National Human Rights Institutions and Equality Bodies in the past 30 years showcases significant progress.

Within minority groups, there are those who have fought against such negative discrimination, sometimes with support from members of the majority. They argue that, in order to bring about equality, it is necessary to promote measures of affirmative action (sometimes called positive discrimination). These measures come as reparation to years of historic injustice that communities have suffered, and are necessary for a determined period of time to ensure that structural inequalities are being eliminated.
 

Xenophobia

Xenophobia comes from a Greek word meaning “fear of the foreigner”. We have here a clear example of a vicious circle: I fear those who are different because I don't know them and I don't know them because I fear them. As with discrimination and racism, xenophobia feeds on stereotypes and prejudices, though it has its origin in the insecurity and the fear projected onto “the other”. This fear of the other is often translated into rejection, hostility or violence against people from other countries or belonging to minorities.

Xenophobia has been used by powerful elites to “protect” their countries from outside influence, as we can see from ex-President Ceausescu, the former dictator of Romania, who liked to quote the poet Mihai Eminescu:
“He who takes strangers to heart /
May the dogs eat his parts /
May the waste eat his home /
May ill-fame eat his name!”

Intolerance

Intolerance is a lack of respect for practices or beliefs other than one’s own. This is shown when someone is not willing to let other people act in a different way or hold different opinions from themselves. Intolerance can mean that people are excluded or rejected because of their religious beliefs, their sexual identity or gender orientation, or even their clothes and hairstyle.
 

Hate speech

Hate speech covers “all forms of expressions which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, antisemitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including: intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination and hostility towards minorities, and migrants and people of migrant origin.”¹ Instances of hate speech can lead to violence against the targeted groups. Hate speech has an important impact both at individual and at a community level. While the Internet and social media platforms have allowed us to be more connected and to exercise our freedom of expression to larger audiences, it has also offered an unprecedented platform for hate speech to spread. The No Hate Speech Movement youth campaign, co-ordinated and implemented by the Council of Europe Youth Department between 2013 and 2018, has worked on this topic, particularly looking at the role of young people.

To explore more the topic of hate speech and what young people can do about it, please check the manual Bookmarks on human rights education to combat hate speech, and We Can on building counter and alternative narratives.
 

Hate crimes (or crimes motivated by bias)

Hate crimes are criminal offences that are motivated by prejudice. This motivation is considered an aggravated circumstance that leads to more severe punishments. The criminal prosecution of hate crimes is important in our societies to show the commitment of a community to eradicate racism. Examples of hate crimes can include physical assault or defacement of property.

To learn more about hate crime, you can try this self-paced online course of the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals Programme of the Council of Europe.
 

Racism

The consequences of racism are terrifying; even the word racism is frightening. Defining ‘racism’ is not easy. Defining it to the point where it would be possible to determine – across Europe – whether any particular action, thought or process could be labelled racist would appear to be verging on the impossible.

Racism is based on the linked beliefs that distinctive human characteristics, abilities, and so on are determined by race and that there are superior and inferior races. Logically, to accept this argument you have to believe that there are different human races.

Racism changes shape over time and may even be called by other names in different places. It is the concept of superiority that is so dangerous – superiority of one group of humans over another. If we start to believe such things then, depending on the time and place, we can lend our tacit or active support to:

• the killing of 400 000 Roma or Gypsy people during the period of the Nazi regime
• the massacres and destructions of entire communities in former Yugoslavia in the name of “ethnic cleansing”
• the reservation of jobs and services to certain groups in society: “Europe for the Europeans”, “France for the French”, “Russia for the Russians”, etc.
• “Algeria is there for the Algerians – so why don't they all go back there”, “Turkey is there for the Turks – so why don't they all go back there”, etc.
• imprisonment or violence against human rights and minority rights defenders
• massive deportations of people and appropriation of their goods
• violence against women, including rape and sexual violence in conflict situations
• denying some people human rights because of their religion or belief
• forced sterilisation of women
• racial profiling.

This Education Pack is based on the complete rejection of such theories or beliefs. The species is human. There is only one race: the human race.

¹ Council of Europe Recommendation 97(20) Hate Speech. A more recent and complete definition is contained in the ECRI’s general recommendation 15 on combating hate speech.