Introduction
Someone somewhere is afraid of wolves while another one is afraid of spiders. There are people who are afraid of water, plants, light, bad smell and even other people. People live in constant fear of diverse things, actions and even emotions. Some of these fears are normal while others are quite abnormal. Why do people develop fears? People develop fears because as they interact with various things in the universe, they tend to develop some psychological detachments that may end up producing a certain kind of antipathy towards some objects (Bourne 9). This kind of fear generates hatred towards the specific object and any encounter with the said object will elicit irrational behaviors from the subject.
Xenophobia
Fear is also called phobia and one of the most common phobias is called Xenophobia. Xenophobia is associated with foreigners. It is also associated with guests and even strangers. The feeling of high levels of antipathy or fear towards foreigners is called xenophobia (Wolpe 111). This fear is usually irrational and is associated with some emotional problems though sometimes it can be exhibited by people who are emotionally sound. People with post-traumatic stress disorder are likely to exhibit this irrational fear. In most cases, this fear is connected with past associations with members of the grouping that the foreigner or the stranger comes from.
For example, there was a white woman in the UK who was brutally attacked by two black men. They left her with a deformed wrist. After the incident, whenever she came across any black person, she would develop panic attacks and run away from the people (Kessler 12). This fear is irrational because it tends to associate people of a certain group with a past action. This reaction of the woman is xenophobic because it highlights fear and hatred of people of another race emanating. Xenophobia is not just a fear of persons whom the subject considers foreigners or strangers. It also entails any aversion to the cultures, the norms, values, belief systems and the practices of the strangers or the foreigners in question.
This means that it is a very wide concept that entails things like origin, linguistic conventions, ways of life, habits and even religious dispositions (Latimer 45). Xenophobia is not racism, but racism is a subset of xenophobia. This is because not all people of a different race are foreigners but someone may hate a foreigner just because of his or her racial background. Xenophobia in most cases has to do with nationalities though in some cases, the issue of race creeps in.
There are cases where xenophobia and racism are used to refer to the same thing especially in Eastern Europe where there are very few natives from other races. In this case, every person of another race is considered to be a foreigner and the fear and hate directed to that person is actually based on racial grounds. However, Xenophobia transcends race and culture because this irrational fear can be extended to people on very many other grounds.
Xenophobia is a concept of fear that has two vital components. The first component is a sub-set of a population that is usually not part of a larger society. This subset represents the immigrants. The immigrants may be recent immigrants or past immigrants that have already been integrated into that society. Xenophobia emanating from this component is very dangerous because it can degenerate into violence or even genocide. There have been cases of mass expulsion of immigrants and foreigners due to this fear of foreigners in some parts of the world recently. The best example of xenophobic reactions was witnessed in South Africa, where foreigners were expunged from major cities by the locals.
The reason behind these xenophobic attacks in South Africa was that the immigrants had taken over the jobs that were meant for the natives and these foreigners were also creating competition for business and economic activities.
The success of the immigrant populations in South Africa intimidated the locals and they feared that the foreigners were going to eclipse them economically. The xenophobic tensions lasted for the better part of the year 2000 leading to hundreds of deaths and massive displacements of immigrants from other parts of Africa (Audie 23). The main targets were Zimbabweans who had run away from the economic crisis that had hit their country then. Other targets of the xenophobic attacks included Somalis, Kenyans and Zambians who were excelling economically in South Africa.
The second component of xenophobia entails the fear of cultures and the main target of this form of xenophobia is some behaviors and practices that are considered to be strange. Every culture has some influences from the outside. There are some cultures that are considered impure because they do not conform to the native cultures and the owners of these cultures can be victims of xenophobia. This is one problem that faces Indians.
Their cultures and practices are usually considered strange in many parts of the world and they have increasingly become victims of xenophobia especially in Europe. However, this type of xenophobia is mild and in most cases, it does not elicit aggression.
The fear of foreigners from a racist perspective is another common form in the world. The form of racism that the Anglo Americans suffer in the United States of America is not xenophobic. There is no fear in this racism. However, the form of racism that is extended to the Latinos in the United States of America is xenophobic. The Latinos are feared and loathed by the natives in the US and they are usually regarded as criminals. This xenophobia emanated from the concept of illegal immigration. Most of the Latinos that are in the United States of America are illegal immigrants mostly from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba and many other Central and South American countries.
Illegal immigration is considered a crime in the US and anyone who gets to the country without the required immigration paperwork is considered to be a criminal. This means that the Latinos, because of the fact that most of them are illegal immigrants, are viewed as criminals by the natives of the United States of America. This has presented a big problem to the Latino population in the United States of America because the natives have developed an irrational fear of the Latinos and in case of an incident of crime, the Latinos are usually implicated.
This fear of the Latinos has generated hate that has seen a lot of negative stereotypes emerge about the Latinos in the US. Apart from the criminal stereotype, Latinos are also considered to be very unintelligent and this stereotype emanates from the fact that most criminals are people who never made it to school. This means that the people of the United States of America believe that Latinos are not intelligent because they are criminals.
Illustrations of Xenophobia
Is xenophobia justified, especially in the 21st century? This is the time that the world should be celebrating cultural diversity but lurking in the shadow is this black menace called xenophobia. The future of the world lies in the acceptance of diversity that is there in the universe and showing utmost tolerance to other people, their practices and belief systems. The world we are living in is different from the world that was there a century ago. In the past, people used to live under geographical confines and it was hard to come across foreigners or people whose values and practices were not in tandem with those of the locality.
However, the world has changed and in this era of globalization, movement from one point of the world to another is very common. This means that the chances of having an encounter with a foreigner are very high. The world has reached a point where it is inevitable to live without foreigners which means that if there is to be peaceful co-existence in the world, then the tolerance of other foreigners and their entire cultural systems must be practiced. There are some forms of fear of foreigners that are justifiable because of the psychological connections that are there but there are some that can be fought (Crozier 67).
This is because some instances of xenophobia emanate from attitudes that are formed against people of certain origins. This means that if these attitudes are quashed, these forms of xenophobia can be eradicated. For example, the fear of foreigners especially people from specific African countries by South Africans was a result of the formation of attitudes towards those people. Instead of appreciating that these people are working hard to uplift the economy of their country, they develop fears that the increasing numbers of African immigrants in South Africa are threatening economic and business opportunities.
The fear of the Latinos in the United States of America is also based on a false belief that all Latinos are criminals because they entered the country in a manner that is considered criminal. Xenophobia is very harmful to a society or a country. It can easily lead to violent reactions or even genocide. This is because intensive fear generates hate which leads to anti-social practices against the targeted population (Audie 23). The genocidal killings that took place in Europe during the Third Reich were partly because of the irrational fear of the Jews and their geographic expansion which led to a war against them that saw their near extermination by the Nazi regime.
The fear of foreigners is something that is supposed to be unheard of in the 21st century yet cases of xenophobia are increasingly being reported. In the UK and the US, xenophobia or the fear of foreigners has taken a religious twist and it has become Islamophobia. Their fear of Muslims nationalities has heightened and this has led to the development of a climate that is unconducive for the Muslims in the two countries.
Muslims have become targets of antisocial behaviors including exclusion and even bullying. In the UK, this fear was aggravated by the London bombings in the middle of the last decade while in the United States of America, this xenophobia widened after the catastrophic terrorist bombings of September 11, 2001. In the two countries, a person from an Islamic background is always viewed as a potential terrorist. The fear of the Muslims in the two countries is evidenced by the specialized checks that the Muslims undergo at the airports before they can be allowed into the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
This action by the two countries has elicited the same kind of response towards American citizens living in Islamic countries. Americans living in Islamic countries have been victims of xenophobic attacks. To start with, the Americans are usually considered to be spies sent on a mission to track terrorists meaning that the nationals in the Islamic countries especially in the Middle East live in fear of the Americans who live in their countries. Secondly, the tensions between the Islamic countries and the United States of America have generated hatred towards the Americans living in those countries and this has heightened xenophobia that is directed towards them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, human beings will continue to live in fear of different things depending on the nature of interactions between them and those things but the worst form of fear is the fear of the other human beings. This is because this is the fear that can have the most dangerous consequences.
Apart from the emotional trauma arising from the aftermath of the actions that are triggered by this fear, xenophobia has led to the wiping off of millions of people from the face of the earth during various instances of genocides. In the 21st century when the world is said to be a global village, the levels of hatred and intolerance that are brought by xenophobia can be very dangerous especially towards the dream of integration of cultures that is expected to unite the people of the world.
Reference
Audie, Katherine. “International Relations and Migration in Southern Africa”. Institute for Security Studies: African Security Review Vol 6 no 3, 1997.
Bourne, Edmund.The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook. New Jersey: New Harbinger Publications. 2005.
Kessler, Edward. Prevalence, Severity, and Comorbidity of 12-Month DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, 2005, Archive of General Psychiatry, Volume 20.
Crozier, Ray. International Handbook of Social Anxiety: Concepts, Research, and Interventions Relating to the Self and Shyness. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2000.
Latimer, Paul. Phobia and psychology: NY: Sage. 2009.
Wolpe, Joseph. Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Washington: Stanford University Press.