Patterns of Prejudice
HANDLIN, OSCAR
Patterns of Prejudice White and Coloured. By Michael Banton. Rutgers University. 223 pp. $4.00 Reviewed by Oscar Handlin Professor of American History, Harvard University THE NEWS FROM South...
...On January 1,1959, there were well over 160,000, almost 100,000 of whom had entered between 1955 and 1958...
...The weakest part of the book, it is based on interviews of a sample of 300 people in the whole United Kingdom, and, of course, has its drawbacks...
...It draws together a fund of useful information and is, on the whole, well done...
...Yet since they were subjects of the Commonwealth, they could not be excluded...
...They created problems not unlike, but more intense than, those of other immigrants...
...and they originated mostly from the West Indies...
...As masters of a world-wide empire they had considerable responsibility for shaping the policy that controlled the lives of millions of black, yellow and brown men...
...His answer is that prejudice is not a necessary concomitant of discrimination...
...The other part of the book consists of a more theoretical examination of the relationship of that discrimination to prejudice...
...Michael Banton has undertaken to survey the consequences of this migration in a study intended to unite theory and observation...
...The sample may be representative of the whole country but attitudes throughout the country may not be uniform...
...One part of his book consists of a survey of existing materials on the character of settlement and of interracial behavior in the commercial cities, universities and industrial towns...
...Banton asks whether the patterns of discrimination that actually exist are simply the products of the immediate situation or whether they reflect some deep underlying prejudice...
...They were in large part laborers who sought more or less permanent residences in the midst of English commercial and industrial cities...
...Since World War II, however, substantial groups of colored people have become residents of Britain...
...Given the importance of class differences in England and also the fact that only a limited sector of the population has had contact with colored people, Banton's findings may show only that those who do not have the occasion to discriminate do not feel prejudiced...
...Furthermore, the newcomers were no longer middle-class students or upper-class visitors...
...Benevolent, paternalistic attitudes developed at home, where the necessity for contact was slight...
...There are few more serious challenges to the West than that of redefining those relationships, and any contribution to an understanding of the question is welcome...
...4.00 Reviewed by Oscar Handlin Professor of American History, Harvard University THE NEWS FROM South Africa, from the Senate and from the lunch counters of the deep South regularly reminds us of the importance of the relationships between Negroes and whites in our world...
...Yet very few such people actually came to live in the British Isles...
...It demonstrates significant types of discrimination and goes a considerable way in advancing explanations for them...
...That situation generated ambiguous points of view...
...Away from home, where discrimination did appear, it was structured in the context of the imperial etiquette of conqueror and conquered and therefore easily justified...
...The experience of the British in the 19th century with the problem of color was anomalous...
...Whether they have latent prejudices, not reflected in verbal responses, is another matter, and an important one...
Vol. 43 • May 1960 • No. 18
