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	Coping With Prejudice Confront Racial, Religious, and Other Bigotry - p. 1 of 2 By Peter K. Gerlach, MSW

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        This is one of over 150 articles focused on building high-nurturance family relationships and preventing divorce. This introduction describes the Web site's purpose and the best ways to use its resources. Each article is part of a mosaic of ideas, so the more you read, the more sense they'll all make. These articles augment, vs. replace, other qualified professional help.

        Before continuing, reflect: why are you reading this - what do you need?

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        This article is for mates' in any kind of family seeking to protect their relationship from major prejudice or biases among their kids and relatives. This article...

• invites you to get clear on your beliefs about prejudice and bigotry,

• proposes four common surface remarital stressors from family prejudices or biases,

• offers perspective on how significant prejudice can affect mates' relationship;

• proposes seven likely primary causes for any significant prejudice problems you mates face.

• Page two outlines nine options for protecting your relationship and family nurturance level in the face of significant prejudices.

        Get the most from this article by first reading...

• this introduction to normal personality subselves (like yours) - slides or text

• this introduction to the toxic [wounds + unawareness] cycle that may stress your family

• basic premises about resolving any relationship problem, and about resolving marital problems

• the requisites for a mutually satisfying relationship,

• the five reasons most stepfamily re/marriages and kids are highly stressed and the common problems they cause, and...

• the 12 safeguard Projects co-parent partners can team up on to counteract these problems.

        The attractive, articulate black woman sat on my therapy couch and looked resentfully at her white fiancé. “You have to understand,” he said defensively. “My parents are Mississippi river people. They weren’t raised to accept, uh, you know…”

        She glared at him. “You said you told them that if they wouldn’t accept me, they’d lose a son! You say you love me. Now I hear you making excuses about not taking me with you and your daughter to visit them for the holidays. Are you with me, or aren’t you?” He couldn’t look at her, and was silent.

        Four or five combined hazards make building new family relationships hard enough. Bi-racial, cross-religious, or same-gender partnerships can add more stresses to mates and their family members. This article explores symptoms and causes of significant prejudice partnership stressors, and proposes practical options to master them. It focuses on protecting your marital harmony and your kids in a "significantly prejudiced" family.

        To learn whether this article is relevant to your situation, try this…

Status check - T(rue), F(alse), or "?" ("I'm not sure" or "It depends on _____")

I can clearly define prejudice and bigotry to a typical high-school student (T  F ?)

I can clearly define what “significant (vs. acceptable) prejudice” is now. (T  F ?)

I (a) know what significant prejudice feels like, and (b) I can truly empathize with those who experience it. (T  F ?)

If I have significant racial, religious, ethnic, gender, or other prejudices now, (a) I can name them, and (b) I can describe where I got them. (T  F ?)

I feel my primary relationship is significantly stressed now by prejudice (a) within our multi-generational family and/or (b) in our local religious or social community. (T  F ?)

My partner feels our relationship is significantly stressed by such prejudice now. (T  F ?)

If so, s/he and I have an effective way of responding to this prejudice now. (T  F ?)

If others’ prejudices require it, I’m willing to firmly assert boundaries that clearly put my marriage ahead of family loyalty and other relationships now, without undue anxiety, guilt, or shame. (T  F ?)

My mate is now clearly (a) able and (b) motivated to do this too. (T  F ?)

My mate and I (a) each have defined our Bills of Personal Rights, and (b) we each act on them consistently and respectfully with the prejudiced people in our lives. (T  F ?)

I can clearly define a values conflict, a stepfamily loyalty conflict, and a relationship triangle  now; and my partner and I can (a) spot each of these and (b) resolve them well enough, now. (T  F ?)

I’m confident that (a) significant prejudice is not a major stressor for our dependent kids now, and that (b) my partner will agree on this. (T  F ?)

I’m sure my true Self is answering these questions. (T  F ?)

        Pause and notice your emotions and where your thoughts go now. Did you just learn anything? If you feel you have significant marital stress now because of some form of bigotry or prejudice, let's look at…

The Surface Problems

    Typical disputes around prejudice and bigotry have surface symptoms, and underlying primary conflicts (unfilled needs.) The core theme is someone believing…

“I am or my people are better than (superior to) you and your people, so I am / we are enti-tled to more (dignity, power, freedom, assets, status, opportunity…). This is an absolute truth, and is not subject to discussion or compromise.”

Premise: as long as you mates focus only on your surface problems, they will recur may increase. The communication skills of awareness, metatalk, and digging down can help you avoid this if your true Selves guide your personalities.

        Across millennia and cultures, people and groups have persecuted and murdered each other for being inferior, barbarians, infidels, savages, foreigners, heretics, unbelievers, and aliens – i.e. different. Our language includes many terms to describe our human trait to claim superiority:

bias redneck spade spic gook

bigot kike wop faggot feminist

prejudice shanty Irish baby-killer nigger untouchables

equal opportunity racial cleansing tree hugger white trash Christ-killers (Jews)

uncultured redlining rag-head (Arab) slant-eyes glass ceiling

As I write this, the media invites global polarization around the anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorist acts of a network of (prejudiced) “Muslim extremists.”

        The existence and efforts of the League of Nations and the United Nations demonstrates others'  equal passion for universal brotherhood, empathy, justice, multi-cultural tolerance, and peace on Earth.

       If you and your partner are of different races, faiths, collar-colors (blue vs. white), and/or cultures, your extended (multi-generational) family falls somewhere on a line between "very tolerant and accepting" to "extremely  bigoted and outspoken."

        A second generic surface problem is your family relatives and others accepting (and teaching kids) stereotypic superior/inferior judgments about groups of people without factual validation...

See any favorites here?

        A third potential marital and family surface stressor is how major prejudices are expressed - from blatant and arrogant (“People should marry their own kind. You’re making a big mistake.”) to covert and righteously denied (“I am not prejudiced against Chicanos!”) Denial and deceit (false-self wounds) block effective problem-solving.

        A fourth possible marital surface stressor is your respective grandparents or other relatives may have different degrees of tolerance and stereotypic beliefs than you adult kids.

Prejudice and Marriage

        Surface problems with bigotry and intolerance can create significantly divisive loyalty conflicts and relationship triangles between mates. The bigots are the Persecutors, the “inferior” person/s are the Victims, and various family members or others can want to Rescue them.

         The most intense loyalty conflicts are usually with rejecting ex mates and grandparents, because the “welfare of the (minor) kids” polarizes everyone. The divorced father at the start of this article had to choose between the African-American woman he loved, and his anti-Black parents and relatives. Choosing not to choose wasn’t an option.

     And major racial, religious, political, or other biases…

are rarely subject to calm discussion and reasoning. Most prejudices are based on learned attitudes and values, which are intrinsically emotional, not logical. This reduces the chance that your family adults can negotiate and really problem-solve (compromise) effectively to-gether. And major biases can…

block family-member bonding and support. That lowers the nurturance levels in and among your related homes, which probably…

decreases the emotional security (raises the anxiety and uncertainty) in your minor kids, and promotes their forming a protective false self. Major biases can also…

cause your family members social rejection and isolation. This is specially so in bi-racial unions, if local society disapproves of this and/or one race or skin color. And…

co-parents’ decisions to have an ours child and/or to legally adopt a stepchild can be more complex and conflictual in a bi-racial stepfamily.

Combined with each other and other stepfamily hazards , the surface problems above promote your eventual psychological or legal re/ divorce, and years of stress for you and your kids and kin.

        The details will vary, but the symptoms and causes of these surface prejudice problems are constant. What are the underlying root problems, and what options do you partners and kin have to resolve them?

The Underlying Primary Problems

        Think of the last time you felt disrespected, ignored, pitied, insulted, or discounted. What did you feel, and what did you do?  Now try a harder challenge: think of the last time you felt or showed major prejudice (superiority) toward another person. What happened to the quality of that relationship?

        After clinical study since 1981, I propose that the root causes of marital (or all) prejudice problems are some mix of these:

Unrecognized psychological wounds in all affected people, specially excessive shame, guilt, distrust, and reality distortions. The thrice-divorced (wounded) Black woman at the start of this article resented and was biased against her (never-married, wounded) fiancé’s (probably wounded) bigoted (wounded, unaware) parents. Another root is…

The primal needs for acceptance (inclusion), respect, and dignity in each of your family adults and kids, starting with you and your mate. Like hunger and breathing, this elemental need is not subject to discussion, reason, or compromise.

      A third root underlying typical prejudice problems is…

The instinctual reflexes of hurt, resentment, anger, and aggression or avoidance when any of your adults or kids feels disrespected. This is specially true if the disrespectful behavior decodes to “I believe...

• you are an inferior (1-down) person,

• I am unquestionably right, and...

• nothing you say or do will change that.”

This is extra frustrating if the bigot feels justified and righteously aligned with God via interpreted words in a Holy book. “In the Bible, God plainly says Jews are His chosen (superior) people, and that women and Black people are inferior.”

Another primary root is our training and instinct against rejecting our parents and grand-parents ("Honor thy Father and thy Mother."). I suspect this reflex comes from some young personality subselves still believing that rejecting parents and/or ancestors will surely bring death and/or eternal agony in Hell.

        I agree with Dr. Abraham Maslow's premise that two basic human needs are to feel (a) accepted, then (b) positively recognized by, a group of respected people. We adults and kids need to belong, for since infancy, aloneness is terrifying (and inescapable). 

        If belonging (acceptance and inclusion) depends on agreeing with relatives' core beliefs, then minor and grown kids risk loss of family status and inclusion if they openly disagree with bigoted ancestors' prejudices. They risk clan rejection, scorn, ridicule, expul-sion and "aloneness."

Another factor that maintains prejudices and their divisive effects is the difficulty we all have in making voluntary, permanent core-attitude changes. This is partly fueled by reluc-tance to admit that our prior (bigoted) attitudes or beliefs were shamefully wrong  or  ignorant, as were the people who taught them to us.

        How comfortable would you be to say publicly “My father and his father are ignorant, prejudiced bigots.”? Or how about “I’ve decided to adopt the Buddhist faith, because I now see the Christian beliefs my parents raised me with to be basically hypocritical.”? What would you risk by openly saying things like that?

        The obsessively-televised terrorist destruction of the New York World Trade buildings in 2001 caused many people to instantly change their core belief that “I’m very safe flying major U.S. airlines, and/or visiting or working in a large landmark building.” I can think of no individual trauma that has directly caused a person to change their biases about race, reli-gion, gender, and ethnicity.

        The Civil War and Martin Luther King’s publicized murder helped shift American social values toward Black equality over 150 years' time, but it’s taken legal power to enforce pub-lic behaviors (vs. personal beliefs) in many places.

An overarching root problem here is the inability to think and communicate effectively in bigoted family members. More specifically, this is a mix of ignorances about personal human rights and needs, and how and when to use these seven vital skills.

        A common symptom of false-self wounds and unawareness of communication basics and skills is a semi-conscious fear of interpersonal conflict and confrontation (emotional overwhelm). People led by their true Selves who are fluent with the seven skills see respectful confrontations as potential relationship builders, and sources of self and mutual respect.

        Before personal recovery, typical survivors of low-nurturance childhoods rarely believe that without major self-doubts (“I don’t like conflict;” or “I don’t do well in confrontations.”) They often equate confrontation with aggression, vs. healthy assertion. Know anyone like that?

A related root problem here is that one or both of you mates aren't aware of the concepts of loyalty conflicts, value conflicts, and relationship triangles, and how to spot and resolve them. If that’s true for you, you're focusing fruitlessly on blaming, debating, justifying, and fighting, (trying for superficial first-order changes) instead of =/=   problem-solving. In other words, you're not aware of focusing on surface symptoms vs. underlying primary problems, and you see no alternatives.

        For example, let's say you're an African American-Caucasian couple with prior kids. The white partner's parents show clear disdain for, and aversion to, the black partner and their relatives. This creates a loyalty conflict with the white mate in the middle, defending his/her relationship choice and partner against his/her own parents That conflict is likely to polarize the both extended families, and promote some relatives to distance or deny (pretend), rather than choose sides and confront. 

        The white senior parents' bias automatically creates a relationship triangle with them in the Persecutor roles, the black mate and any kids in Victim roles, and the white mate and supporters playing Rescuer roles. This dispute also probably promotes a concurrent loyalty conflict with the kids in the middle, defending their parent against "those other people."

        That may cause their other bioparent to take sides, which may put the black mate in the middle (Rescuer), defending her/his Victimized partner against the ex mate's criticism and scorn (Persecutor).

        If you think that's complex, note that we didn't include the inner-family conflicts that are happening at the same time - e.g. the white mate feeling "torn" (guilty) about judging, resenting, and confronting his/her own parents, yet feeling compelled to. Each person in a family loyalty conflict or relationship triangle usually has one or more inner conflicts like this to add to the ruckus.

        As long as you partners...

• remain unaware of the primary problems like these, and...

• ignorant of how to resolve them and protect your personal serenity and remarriage, then...

• your complex web of prejudicial stressors will probably ferment and cause increasing secondary conflicts in and between you.

        We just surveyed seven common primary problems that combine to cause typical mixes of surface family "prejudice problems.”

Continue with nine options for resolving these primary problems. Do you need a stretch-break first?
 

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Updated  November 30, 2008