Xenophobia

We explain what xenophobia is, what its causes and examples are. Also, its relationship with racism and discrimination.

What is xenophobia?

Fear is called xenophobia, contempt or hatred of people who come from a nation or culture different from one's ownthat is, to foreigners, including their cultural manifestations, their language or everything that can be associated with the foreign.

Xenophobia oscillates in its manifestations between intense and violent variants, capable of leading to crimes (murders, beatings, etc.) to gentler forms of rejection. One of the most common variants of xenophobia is that which is based on racial distinctions, that is, racism.

The origin of xenophobia could be assumed in the beginnings of human civilizationwhen groups and communities were weak and primitive and any stranger represented a threat to them that had to be responded to with force.

Thus, the feelings of early human civilization could be a cultural remnant of our evolution as a species, or They can be the result of social traumasor attempts to find a convenient culprit for the problems a community faces. It is no coincidence that in moments of crisis, foreigners are the first to be accused of being responsible.

Xenophobic attitudes, gestures and actions not only are ethically reprehensible to most modern nationsbut also illegal: many penal codes consider them as a crime punishable by law, in an attempt to prevent hate speech and social revenge, which at least in the West usually come from reactionary positions, usually from the extreme right.

See also: Feminist movement

Examples of xenophobia

Examples to illustrate xenophobia abound in human history, unfortunately:

• The persecution of the Jews in Nazi Europe. The National Socialist government headed by Adolf Hitler, triggering the Second World War and the tragedy known as the Jewish Holocaust, enacted legislation in the mid-20th century that snatched away citizens of Jewish origin and other foreign peoples considered “inferior” (gypsies). , Slavs, etc.) all types of civil rights and reduced them to the notion of slaves.
• Segregation on the island of Hispaniola. This Caribbean island is home to two different countries: Haiti, one of the poorest nations in the hemisphere, and the Dominican Republic. The first is a former French colony, the second Spanish. And between the two there is a border that is sustained not only by political geography, but by the rejection of Dominicans towards their poorer neighbors, preventing them from passing through and often treating them as threatening agents.
• The Arab-Palestinian conflict. With deep roots in the 20th century, this conflict pits the nation of Israel, founded in 1948, against its neighbors of Arab origin, especially the Palestinians, who occupied the territory where the young Jewish nation was established. This complex conflict has led to hostilities and wars between both sides, and many acts of xenophobic violence on the part of Israel, the most powerful state and ally of the United States, such as massacres, expulsions and illegal land appropriations.
• Mexico-USA border. The intense Mexican and Central American migration to the United States has caused enormous tensions in the border area of ​​both countries, causing American ranchers to violently reject the presence of the migrants (whom they call wetbacks“wet backs”), and promoting a xenophobic policy of deportations and persecutions, which considers Mexicans responsible for American ills.

Racism and xenophobia

Although they are not the same, xenophobia and racism they usually go hand in hand. Racist considerations, which distinguish between one individual and another simply by the color of their skin or their ethnic origin, take these individuals as strangers, that is, as alien to the community, applying a somewhat infantile notion of “ purity” or “nature” that has nothing to do with the history of the constitution of nations, in which migrants and cultural and racial exchanges have been great engines of growth and cultural wealth.

However, racism can occur between individuals of the same nationas often happens in multiethnic nations or products of colonial origins.

Most modern Western states have enacted laws against racism and promote ethnic diversity as a value, but a true culture of racial equity has yet to be built.

Discrimination

Both racism and xenophobia are forms of discriminationthat is, granting or withdrawing opportunities, aid or benefits to various individuals or social groups based on their nationality, ethnic origin or other characteristics, such as sexual orientation (as denounced by LGBT communities), biological sex (as denounced by feminism) or religion.

so that Discrimination can be defined as the rejection of a certain human group due to prejudicestribal hatreds or purist notions of culture, thus resulting in exclusion and an imbalance of opportunities. Machismo, to cite an example, represents a form of exclusion towards women and towards diverse forms of masculinity.

Continue in: Discrimination