Discrimination An Outbreak of Bigotry

An epidemic of ethnic hatred is sweeping the world, dismaying and perplexing fair-minded people who are at a loss to explain it. Why are Jewish cemeteries in France and Italy being desecrated? Why are Turks in Bulgaria and Koreans in Japan viewed as infections in the national bloodstream? Why do Africa's Hutu and Tutsi tribes continue to slaughter one another? Social scientists are not much help with such questions. They generally regard ethnocentrism -- a preference for one's own group -- as an innate human characteristic, and they have produced little significant research on the virulent course these feelings often take.

The core of the problem seems to be the determination of almost every group to feel superior to others. In some countries, those emotions have been codified into discriminatory laws like South Africa's apartheid, but even without them, ethnic hatred can make itself felt. Traditionally, that attitude was labeled racism. But the term can hardly embrace attacks as diverse as those on black Americans in New York City, North African workers in Italy, Arab immigrants in France, Romanies (Gypsies) in Czechoslovakia, Hungarians in Romania. Very few Jews are left in Central Europe after Hitler's Holocaust, but the anti-Semitism that lay dormant under communist repression has sprung back to life. The best word to describe the whole sickening phenomenon may simply be bigotry.

; Countries like France and Japan don't perceive themselves as nations of bigots. Neither condones violence or the persecution of minorities. But both see themselves as possessing a certain superiority -- cultural in France, ethnic in Japan -- and they are uncomfortable with the presence of aliens. Such largely unspoken social attitudes frequently provide the grist for demagogic politicians to transform into blatantly racist actions and policies. But as the following reports also illustrate, the governments in Paris and Tokyo are increasingly aware of their problem and are trying to deal with both public outrages and long-standing prejudices.