Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/627

 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RACE-PREJUDICE 609

monial, as well as political and commercial, association with it. It would not, in fact, be a matter of surprise if the checks to this were found rather on the side of the oriental race small and yellow, but able, ancient, and traditionally set against occidental intrusion.

When not complicated with caste-feeling, race-prejudice is, after all, very impermanent, of no more stability, perhaps, than fashions. The very fact of difference, indeed, and of new appeals to the attention, may act as a stimulus, a charm, as is shown by the fact that the widespread practice of exogamy has its root in the interest of men in unfamiliar women. 1 The experiences of each group have created a body of traditions and standards bound up with emotional accompaniments, and these may be so opposed as to stand in the way of associa- tion, but it is particularly in cases where one of the groups has risen to a higher level of culture that contempt for the lower group is persistent. In this case antipathy of the group for an alien group is reinforced by the contempt of the higher caste for the lower. Psychologically speaking, race-prejudice and caste- reeling are at bottom the same thing, both being phases of the instinct of hate, but a status of caste is reached as the result of competitive activities. The lower caste has either been con- quered and captured, or gradually outstripped on account of the mental and economic inferiority. Under these conditions, it is psychologically important to the higher caste to maintain the feeling and show of superiority, on account of the suggestive effect of this on both the inferior caste and on itself; and signs of superiority and inferiority, being thus aids to the manipulation of one class by another, acquire a new significance and become more ineradicable. Of the relation of black to white in this country it is perhaps true that the antipathy of the southerner for the negro is rather caste-feeling than race-prejudice, while the feeling of the northerner is race-prejudice proper. In the North, where there has been no contact with the negro and no activity connections, there is no caste-feeling, but there exists a

1 See " Die Entstehung der Exogamie," Zeitschrift fur Socialwissenschaft, Vol. V, pp. I ft.