Anti-locution

1. Anti-locution • Literally “to speak against” • The first stage in which feelings of negative prejudice come expressed against those people on whom on feels prejudice by speech • The most common form of prejudice • Rears its head in many different ways from ethnic jokes to direct name calling

2. Avoidance • The next stage in prejudice in which people intentionally refuse contact with the group they harbor prejudice towards • Often seen, like anti-locution, to be relatively harmless • If it is generally viewed as unacceptable it is still not often connected to violence • However, this is a further de-humanization of the people who are hated or disliked; it is a direct refusal to see the humanity in the other; this forced blindness opens the door to outright violence

3. Discrimination • Specific denial of human rights to people • Specific examples: • Denial of jobs based on race, ethnicity, sex, religion etc. • Segregation of neighborhoods/schools • Restricting educational opportunities

4. Discrimination continued • Again, this is not considered outright “violence” i.e. physical attack or killings • However, the stripping of rights is considered not only leaves a group of people more vulnerable to widespread violence but also is a sort of passive violence in which people are prevented their full human dignity and rights • In the disasters of the 20th century, legalized discrimination was almost always the last stage before mass killings

5. Physical Attack • Where prejudice actually turns physically violent • Does not necessarily have to be direct attacks on persons themselves but rather can include property vandalizing, graffiti, desecrating of holy sites, etc. • Usually these sorts of attacks are sporadic, uncoordinated, or mob related • In the case of an event like “Kristallnacht”, it is state-sanctioned violence which was mostly directed on things rather than people

6. Extermination • Obviously, the final and most total stage of prejudice • The intention and action to eliminate the undesired group by either deportation or killing • Infamously, the 20th century has seen this stage become reality in the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide

7. What is the common thread? • Throughout all of these stages of prejudice there is the common refusal to see or recognize the other as human • To pursue acts of prejudice, one must always reduce the undesired group to sub-human or less-than human • For Hitler, the term was “untermensch”; other times it’s “dogs” or “rats” or “vermin” • Also, there is the unmistakable hatred and fear of diversity throughout these 5 stages; diversity is not good: it is an inconvenience at best and at worst a direct threat to your whole way of life