Racism: What It Is and How to Deal with It - Uned

Module 1 – What is Racism? | 29
One tendency in the process of building a social identity is to exaggerate the
differences between groups and exaggerate the similarities that occur within our own
group, but this is only an exaggeration. There are many differences between any two
people in a group (think of any two people in your group and think about the
differences and similarities between them), just like there are many similarities
between people from different groups. On one hand, we not only exaggerate the
differences and similarities within one group and between one group and the rest, but
we also exaggerate the virtues of our own group and the defects of the rest
(Ponterotto and Pedersen, 1993).
This game of belonging also leads us to have an excessively rigid image of our
identity, of those traits that are supposed to constitute us and define us. Our own
identity changes throughout the years: from contact with people from other groups,
from the influence of the communications media, time spent in other places, etc. Our
identity is much more complex, multiple, and dynamic than we think. We should be
capable of developing contexts that would help us to be more open to external
influences, to get everything positive possible out of each place and experience that
we encounter. We are under pressure (both from within our own group and from
outside groups) to shut ourselves into the shell that supposedly identifies us. This
pressure makes it hard for us to adapt to other contexts and it makes it hard for us to
grow and evolve personally. But one thing is clear: change does not necessarily have
to be perceived negatively.
Clarifying all of these issues of identity is important for understanding what a racist
mechanism is, because racist mechanisms play with the idea of identity. However
they do not use it with its innate complexity, but rather reduce it to a series of outlined,
caricatured ideas, that are then generalized to all the members classified in the same
group.
This is why, when an identity crisis process, having to do with the relations between
groups in society or with the redefinition of the relations between groups, is
generated, such as the one provoked by the fall of the Iron Curtain in some European
countries or by the process of immigration, it is very “tempting” to resort to
mechanisms that simplify and reorder. Mechanisms that simplify the process of
redefinition make it easier and quicker, and those that reorder the hierarchy among
groups (who is better and who is worse and, therefore, who deserves more or fewer
privileges) do so in the most advantageous way for the group with the most power.
These situations, therefore, create a “culture medium” for racist mechanisms because
they always provide an easy and fast mechanism for defining relations among groups,
a mechanism that is highly advantageous for the majority group, in a difficult situation.