Causes of Prejudice

Prejudice is an opinion that is not based on actual evidence or experience. In “Causes of Prejudice,” Vincent Parillo describes the psychological and sociological reasons of prejudice. Among these causes, frustration is defined to produce a prejudicial attitude towards others. Parillo explains in his work that throughout history, minority groups have been used as scapegoats to take the blame for certain events. He clarifies that scapegoating is the act of blaming others for an incident that is not their fault. This idea is also visible in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in the part where a lawyer named Atticus tries to prove an African American innocent who has been falsely charged with raping a white woman. Therefore, both Parillo’s “Causes of Prejudice” and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird support that frustration is a cause of prejudice because of an increase in aggression towards a scapegoat. To begin with, frustration is caused by relative deprivation, which is the lack of resources in an individual’s environment when compared to others. This results in aggression towards a scapegoat in order to relieve this tension. “Frustrated people may easily strike out against the perceived cause of their frustration. However, this reaction may not be possible because the true source of the frustration is often too nebulous to be identified or too powerful to act against” (Parillo 583). His view is also seen in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Mayella Ewell claims Tom Robinson has raped her. Atticus tries to prove to the jury that Tom Robinson in fact did not rape Mayella and that she, a white woman, kissed Tom, a black man. Mayella is an Ewell; a very poor family in the town of Maycomb and therefore she has to live through tough conditions which include living behind the garbage dump, barely having any money to support her dad and seven siblings, as well as being beaten by her own father. Most importantly, she is frustrated that she always feels