CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS OF SPREADING RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA

Abstract

Some problems of determination of racism and xenophobia as background phenomena for crime have been analyzed. The concept of racism and xenophobia has been considered; the cultural and psychological factors of their distribution have been highlighted and characterized.

It has been noted that among a number of cultural and psychological factors of the spread of racism and xenophobia, the factor of in-depth legal, moral and political nihilism attracts attention. This means that not only dismissive, equal attitude to the law, the institute of justice, other institutional and normative components of socio-dynamics by the population contributes to the reproduction of crimes under the Art. 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, as the most sensitive indicators of the state of the hatred phenomenon. The role of state officials in this process is no less significant. Silent sympathy, and often active support for discriminatory practices, only assist to consolidate xenophobic installations in the deep layers of mass consciousness.

The basic structural component of spreading racism and xenophobia is the negative social setting – a system of views, ideas about a social object or event (cognitive unit), a set of emotional states associated with them (emotional unit), predisposing to the corresponding actions (behavioral unit). The prevailing negative setting in the mechanism of xenophobia is the bias, that is, the negative attitude towards representatives of any social group, solely due to their membership in this group. Racist and xenophobic settings are supported by the negative stereotyping of consciousness, which is largely formed by the mass media.

Since the phenomenon of fear is the basis of racism and xenophobia at the individual level and at the level of mass asocial practices, the author precisely focuses on their cultural and psychological factors. Being in the unity with the socio-economic ones, the latter intensify the deformation processes in various forms of social consciousness, especially in moral, political and legal awareness. Therefore, their detection, description, and explanation are integral elements of the strategy for combating racism and xenophobia, both at the national, regional and international levels.