Michaela Špringlová: The roots of prejudices
When we, as humans, think about our relationship to animals, we should notice the great inconsistency in what we do to these animals as a whole society, and what we (presumably) think is right. As has been suggested, people are assumed to have a rather positive relationship to animals – they often own pets to which they can create deep emotional ties. But on the other hand, tens of billions of animals are killed every year for human needs - such as food, fur, vivisection, hunting, or also because of an overwhelming amount of the beloved pets in shelters. In addition, this shady side of the human relationship to animals is not so often mentioned, but on the contrary, it is hidden, and its gravity tends to be lightened. That is precisely the reason why it may seem inappropriate when these tremendous numbers of animals experiencing an oppression by humans, are comparable to holocaust. But the reason why it is compared to the holocaust is its coincidence – it is originated from a system of values that celebrates the power, domination and violence of the inferior ones.
This controversial claim is based on the fact that the atrocities committed on animals are a precursor of crimes against humans themselves. The idea can be found in the book Eternal Treblinka, the author of which is a historian dealing with the holocaust and its context, Ch. Paterson. This statement becomes even stronger when we imagine all the similar forms of oppression and suffering that have caused humans to other humans over history – slavery, racism, genocide, pogroms and many other atrocities, and compare them with all forms of violence on animals that are being committed daily. All these forms of oppression against humans have their roots in enslaving and killing animals. Moreover, what stands at the beginning of these forms of oppression on animals, and then on other humans, are prejudices.
The existence of prejudices is influenced by many psycho-social processes. However, because humans’ society is in a close relationship to its environment, relationship between humans is not the only perspective where prejudices can take their place. It is important to say that these prejudices are not just about how people perceive other people, but also how they perceive animals, or correctly said non-human animals. The animal rights activists often use the phrase “human and nonhuman animals,” because their terminology points to the efforts to remove the symbolic boundaries between humans and animals (Cherry, 2010). The symbolic boundaries have a negative consequences in its separate perception because this maintains a hierarchical differentiation between humans who are perceived as superior, and animals that are perceived as inferior. This process of symbolic boundaries expansion is what animal rights activists are trying to achieve. They want to extend the term "animal" to include human as well as non-human animals (Wimmer, 2008).
Ch. Patterson in his book Eternal Treblinka claims that prejudices among people are based on the way how people treat non-human animals. Prejudices about non-human animals are much more rooted in humans, and it is harder to unlearn them. Among people’s relationship to non-human animals we can identify that our prejudices against them stands on a speciecism and that we do not treat animals the same way as other non-human animals because of carnism. Speciecism as an ideology of people’s dominance over non-human animals has similarities in racism, where we see that one of human’s race feel superior over the others. In addition, carnism ideology’s central aspect is that non-human animals are categorized according to people's mental classifications to categories as edible, inedible, etc. (M. Joy, 2009).
Not only that prejudices have not disappeared in our society and they are still present with us, but the same applies to the threats which can be caused by them. The causes that can have the form of being different from what the social consensus is considered to be "normal". This applies not only to individual activities or beliefs that prevail in a particular society, but also to a group of people who make up a majority in a given company. Prejudices can arise in the case that something is different from the socio-cultural “normality”.
As an example, I would like to focus on the prejudices carnist people have. Carnism is an ideology standing towards veganism, which all the prejudices about non-human animals (as an ideology) does not have. A person who is vegan does not differentiate between non-human animals as edible or inedible - he or she sees them as equal beings and does not look at them as the life of one of them is more important than the life of another, which also means they do not eat any animal products. Because I identify myself as a vegan, I often encounter misunderstandings or conflicts with a major society, that is carnistic. These controversies are based on the prejudices carnist people can have against vegans. Because of these prejudices, they often create a negative image of vegan people (because they differ in some way from the major society) and based on this negative precontemplation and distorted idea about the social group, they can also behave to them with a scorn. I often see that vegans have to face to carnist people’s behavior that ridicules them, but fortunately I also encounter positive exceptions.
As a conclusion, I think that when we would like to unlearn our prejudices against other people, first we would have to rethink our relationship to non-human animals. For me personally, rethinking our relationship to non-human animals is a kind of a tool, which can help us to understand the complexness of a social diverseness we live in. Every time I hear a talk about marginalized social groups, I know that sociologists should be even more critical and try to make the connection even between non-human animals because they are also marginalized, on the same principles as people are being marginalized. Critical challenge to the anthropocentric view of the world can be one of the way to break the gap between people who differ from the major society by characteristics they cannot influence. I see it as one of the basic tools that can help us include beings who are socially excluded in our society because human and non-human animals are more closely tied together than humans are willing to admit.
Reference list
- Cherry, Elizabeth. 2010. Shifting Symbolic Boundaries: Cultural Strategies of the Animal Rights Movement. Sociological Forum, Vol. 25, No. 3. DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2010.01191.x
- Joy, M. (2009). Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An introduction to Carnism. Conari Press.
- Patterson, Charles. (2002). Eternal Treblinka: our treatment of animals and the Holocaust. New York: Lantern Books.
- Wimmer, Andreas. (2008). The Making and Unmaking of Ethnic Boundaries: A Multilevel Process Theory. American Journal of Sociology 113(4): 970–1022.