“Generally believed” on the basis of weak evidence.
I’m an expert on stigma and discrimination and the root causes are power and structural violence. Ignorance may be a multiplier but it’s not a root cause of stigma including racial animus.
Goffman pointed it out in his original book (1963):
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It's generally believed that education reduces prejudice. But in some countries, elites and education systems actively foment antisemitism.
We test the association between them with a unique global dataset of individual-level survey data measuring antisemitic attitudes and stereotypes.
While it’s true that contact btw in-groups and out-groups can in some circumstances reduce stigma, it’s also true that the people on the hill can know the people in the valley very well, for centuries, and can still stigmatize and discriminate against the latter
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The historical examples of antisemitism in the modern era show VERY clearly that Jew hatred is hardly a function of a lack of knowledge or awareness of Jewish people. Read “Neighbors” for goodness sake.
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
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Ignorance may be a multiplier, but it’s not the root cause of structural stigma. The result:
We are not going to educate ourselves out of racial animus. The notion that if we learn about the Shoah we can avoid repeating it is IMO not much more than a pious hope.
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It is of course good to learn about the past! And our complicity in mass atrocity. This memory culture is important for a variety of reasons. But the notion that such remembrance is a viable anti-stigma mechanism is supported by little evidence and even less theory.
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