Outcasts United Chapter 9

By now you have read about the experience of the families of three or four of the members of the Fugees. It probably seems hard to imagine the kind of hatred that would lead people to systematically kill entire groups just because they belong to a different group. What must be going on in a person's mind to motivate them to kill someone or drive them from their home?

Culture does not explain individual act of violence as well as it explains acts of genocide such as in those committed in Rwanda, Burundi and Germany during World War II. Everyone on earth belongs to a culture. On the surface, culture includes things like clothing, food and music. These are  known as material culture. Below the surface, lurks non-material culture. Non-material culture includes the values and beliefs that are taught to individuals who belong to groups. That group could be a religion, a nationality or even a group as small as a school, family, team or group of friends. The values that are passed on by these groups can be as large as men's views about women or as subtle as the belief that walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror will bring bad luck.  
I have a metaphor that helps understand how culture shapes the way we all think and act. Culture is like a lens that we see the world through. Our values and beliefs are what create the lens. Every person's unique beliefs, values, customs and behaviors makes a unique lens. The lens is unique but it is also blurry/distorted. It is distorted because, your values and beliefs conflict with the values of other people. This could be as harmless as thinking people that like country music or sport mullets are wierd. It also occurs when you root for an American in the Olympics. If your lens weren't blurry, you would choose who to root for based on a picture that included as much information as possible about each athlete. However, we rarely have time to gather a complete set of information about the people that we make judgements about. Thus, we identify most closely with those who share appearance, values and behaviors that are similar to ours.
The less familiar we are with a person's appearance, actions and behaviors, the more distorted our view of those people. To the extent that these beliefs blurr the way groups see members of other groups, the tendency for those groups to cause harm to the members of those groups increases. When a person grows up being taught negative beliefs about members of another race, religion, gender, ethnicity etc.the easier it will be for them to act against them in some harmful way. Then, if we feel that group means us harm, we might look the other way while bad things happen to them or feel like we have to act to protect ourselves, or even act upon them first. This is the case with Islamic terrorists. They are often taught strict religious teachings in their school. In the case where women's modesty is concerned, the dress and behavior of women in America, as portrayed in popular media, prompt them to think that our culture is evil and corrupt. Add this one example to the many others that blurr the views of many Muslims towards America, and you can see how they might come to believe that American culture is like a cancer that is spreading across the face of the earth. If you believe this, then you might want to kill it. This how Islamic Jihad leads to terrorist acts. It also explains all of the acts of genocide explained in Outcasts United.
It also explains how, to a lesser degree, the residents of Clarkston, Georgia; including the mayor and members of the police force might act against the many refugees who had moved to their community. The book explains how much Clarkston had changed in just a few years. People's beliefs and views change very slowly. In the case of the mayor, a combination of factors led him to prohibit the Fugees  and older Sudanese refugees from practicing on an otherwise empty field. First, being a white resident of the South, he would have been raised during an era of strong racial prejudice against blacks. The community that elected him undoubtedly shared his views. He even used his belief in the suprmacy of baseball as a reason why the Fugees couldn't use the fields.

The first chief of police represented in the book and many of the officers also saw refugees with distorted lenses. The instance of a policeman beating an upstanding member of the community and throwing him in jail  for simply asking why the officer pulled him over shows how distorted his views of black people were. There was also an instance when another officer began to issue a citation to a refugee just arriving in Clarkstaon, who, in his excitement to see his relatives did not park his vehicle according to the Clarkston ordinances.

In addition to the idea of a distorted cultural lens, geography offers another theory that helps us understand why some people/groups/countries are more powerful than others. It is called the Core-Periphery Model. The Core-Periphery Model says that the dominant group will favor those who share their values and marginalize (push away from the center) those who are not like them. The more dis-similar a person is, the further away they will get pushed. This can happen on a large scale; rich countries like the U.S. Japan, Australia at the core and poor countries like Burundi, Liberia, Sudan on the periphery. As explained in the last blog, the countries of Europe exploited the African countries on the periphery. It can also happen on a local scale; the mayor denying access to the fields and the police targeting non-whities. The author, Warren St. John, also explains how the players on the Fugees were continually seeking favor from Luma. Players who could speak Arabic tried to use it to move closer to the core (Luma). Others felt more important when Luma would spend time at their home.
This model can be used in almost any social situation to identify and explain the status of different members of the group in relations to each other. It explains the conflict of the Liberian youth who are easier targets for gangs. As poor refugees with dark skin, poor English skills and little education, they were pretty far out on the periphery. By wearing their hair in braids and wearing baggy pants they could be accepted by gangs and thereby move closer to the core than before. Power is one of the goals of gangs. That is why they fight over territory. The irony is that they don't play by the rules established by those in the core. In the U.S., any person can end up in the core through hard work and education. The further out on the periphery you are the harder it is, but it can be done.

Too often, following the rules established by the core feels like selling out and betraying your racial or ethnic group. It is easier to get angry and fight against them. The problem is, this usually backfires and leaves a person further out than before. The group in power resists those that they perceive as a threat, thereby pushing them away. The more a group is pushed away the harder they fight back. This has worked on occasion. Gandhi's efforts in India led to independence. Martin Luther King learned from the methods used by Gandhi to help Blacks in America gain more equal rights. The key here is that their efforts were non-violent. The revolutions in the Tunisia and Egypt were mostly non-violent. Those in Libya and Syria have been very bloody. Usually, the more blood that is shed, the more difficult it is to establish peace after the ruling core is thrown out. Often, those who were on the periphery end up marginalizing those groups that oppressed them and the cycle starts all over again.

I hope this explanation of the cultural lens and core-periphery model are helpful to you in understanding the society is organized. We have all been on the periphery at some point in our lives. Hopefully, this explanation will help you to understand where you stand in any given group. If you don't like where you are, rather than following our basic animal fight or flight instincts, we can use the rules of the majority to gain power. This does not mean that you have to sell out and lose your identity. All you have to do is to seek learning and understanding. This will not only make you more capable and valuable, it will also make your culture lens clearer so you can see the course that you need to take to become the person that you are capable of.