There are similarities and differences among sexism, racism, homophobia, and antisemitism. This thread is slopping them all together.
Many older studies of prejudice had a "tendency to collapse distinctions between types of prejudice..." observed Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. They assumed "that a nationalism and racism, an ethnocentric prejudice and an ideology of desire, can be dynamically the same..." Furthermore, she observes "there is a tendency to approach prejudice either psychologically or sociologically without consideration for the interplay of psychological and sociological factors."
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
See also:
Lise Noël, Intolerance, A General Survey, (Montreal: McGill-Queen's Univeristy Press, 1994).
I understand Ehrenreich to be pointing to research based on the "fight or flight" response which appears to be hard wired into all mammals. This may lead to an innate fear of "strangeness" or new situations where we have yet to compartmentalize data. The trick is, what gets defined as strange and who gets scapegoated as the "other" is culturally derived. Instead of basing "strangeness" on the fiction of race, we could just as easily define the "other" as bullies and arrogant people who are discourteous. Its all in our shared definition of the norm.
Furthermore, things that are "hard-wired" can be greatly influenced and even functionally negated by social pressure. When I was in an early men's consciousness discussion (before the whiners and drummers took over the movement) we talked about how most men (all?) have fantasies about having sex with a lot of the women (or men, if gay) they meet, and even rape. Was this hard wired or culturally located? Probably both. But are we supposed to assume that since it may be patly hard-wired we don't have to change our behavior to act appropriately?
Are we now going to recapitulate the entire nature/nurture controversy, complete with posts by people who don't have time to read the literature?
Can this be hell? Just in time for the millennium?
:-)
-Chip Berlet