Intergroup Relationships
Learning Outcomes
- Explain different intergroup relations, ranging from extreme levels of intolerance (i.e. genocide) to tolerance (pluralism)
Intergroup relations (relationships between different groups of people) range along a spectrum between tolerance and intolerance. The most tolerant form of intergroup relations is pluralism, in which no distinction is made between minority and majority groups, but instead there is equal standing. At the other end of the continuum are amalgamation, expulsion, and even genocide—stark examples of intolerant intergroup relations.
Genocide
Genocide, the deliberate annihilation of a targeted (usually subordinate) group, is the most toxic intergroup relationship. Historically, we can see that genocide has included both the intent to exterminate a group as well as the function of effectively exterminating a group–whether this was intentional or not.
Possibly the most well-known case of genocide is Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people both immediately before and during World War Two. Also known as the Holocaust, the explicit goal of Hitler’s “Final Solution” was the programmatic eradication of European Jewry, as well as the decimation of other minority groups such as Catholics, people with disabilities, and homosexuals. With forced emigration, concentration camps, and mass executions in gas chambers, Hitler’s Nazi regime was responsible for the deaths of 12 million people, 6 million of whom were Jewish. Hitler’s intent was clear, and the high Jewish death toll certainly indicates that his regime committed genocide. But how do we understand genocide that is not so overt and deliberate?
The treatment of Aboriginal Australians is also an example of genocide, in this case one that was committed against indigenous people. Historical accounts suggest that between 1824 and 1908, white settlers killed more than 10,000 Aborigines in Tasmania and Australia (Tatz 2006). Another example is the European colonization of North America. Some historians estimate that Native American populations dwindled from approximately 12 million in the year 1500 to barely 237,000 by the year 1900 (Lewy 2004). European settlers coerced Native Americans from their lands, often causing thousands of deaths in forced removals, such as occurred in the Cherokee or Potawatomi Trail of Tears. Settlers also enslaved Native Americans and forced them to give up their religious and cultural practices, but the major cause of Native American deaths was neither slavery, nor war, nor forced removal: it was the introduction of European diseases and Native Americans’ lack of immunity to them. Smallpox, diphtheria, and measles flourished among indigenous American tribes who had no exposure to the diseases and no ability to fight them. Quite simply, these diseases decimated the tribes. How planned this genocide was remains a topic of contention. Some argue that the spread of disease was an unintended effect of conquest,