Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/619

 THE PSYCHOL OGY OF RA CE-PREJUDICE 60 1

whose tears must be poured forth in the country of the enemy to embitter their vengeance. These sat silently in their lodges, and strove to conceal

their feelings behind a stoical countenance The first sad shock over,

then came the change of habiliments. In savage usage the outward expres- sion of mourning surpasses that of civilization. The Indian mourner gives up all his good clothing and contents himself with scanty and miserable gar- ments. Blankets are cut in two, and the hair is cropped short. Often a devoted mother will scarify her arms and legs ; a sister or a young wife would cut off all her beautiful hair and disfigure herself by undergoing hard- ships. Fathers and brothers blackened their faces and wore only the shab- biest garments. 1

II.

If it is assumed, then, that the group comes to have a quasi- personality, and that, like the individual, it is in an attitude of suspicion and hostility toward the outside world, and that, like the individual also, it has a feeling of intimacy with itself, it follows that the signs of unlikeness in another group are regarded with prejudice. It is also a characteristic of the atten- tion that unlikeness is determined by the aid of certain external signs namely, physical features, dress, speech, social habits, etc. and that the concrete expressions of prejudice are seen in connection with these. We may therefore examine in more detail the directions taken in the expression of prejudice, and the signs of personality to which it attaches itself, with a view to determining its depth or superficiality, and getting light on the conditions under which it is eradicable or modifiable.

Humboldt was perhaps the first observer to make a general statement on the predilection which every group has for its own peculiarities :

Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which particularly charac- terizes their own physical conformation, their national physiognomy. Hence it ensues that among a people to whom nature has given very little beard, a narrow forehead, and a brownish-red skin, every individual thinks himself handsome in proportion as his body is destitute of hair, his head flattened, his skin more covered with annatto, or chica, or some other copper-red color. 2

And the more concrete reports of other observers are to the same effect:

'C. A. EASTMAN, Indian Boyhood, p. 223.

2 A. VON HUMBOLDT, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, ed. BOHN, Vol. I, p. 303.