翻訳 人種偏見のメカニズム

The issue of racial prejudice is almost always discussed emotionally. For example, what is referred in the Japanese media as “hate speech” includes the emotional word “hate”. And the frequently used approach to combat such “hate speeches” is to appeal to the morals of those who use “hate speeches”. But as academics, we need to look at racial prejudice objectively, using scientific means to analyse the issue. The four papers by Ruth Benedict that we present here do exactly that - in these papers, Benedict tries to analyse the issue of racial prejudice and war scientifically. By doing so, she reveals that racial prejudice, racial superiority and war are deeply rooted in the social system. In times of war, blacks, whites and Jews unite against the common enemy, but in times of peace, people turn against each other. Through careful analysis of the social structure which creates prejudice, Benedict succeeds in forcefully arguing that racial prejudice has no scientific basis for justification. Benedict takes the same scientific approach to analyse the history of war. She talks about two kinds of war - one where the purpose is simply to decide which group is stronger than the other without destroying the civilisation of the defeated group; and the other where the purpose is to destroy the enemy and take over the defeated group. She illustrates the case of some American Indian tribes where the former type of war exits and compares this to World War I which is the latter type. The reason why the American Indian tribes had no interest in destroying the conquered enemy was because they were dependent on the produce of the defeated tribes. They knew that by destroying their enemy’s civilisation, they would only be putting their own livelihoods at risk. When we think of the world we live in today, we realise that nations are also interdependent. We can no longer exist in isolation without importing goods from other countries, without counting on other countries to purchase our products, or without the cooperation of other countries to protect our environment. What Benedict forcefully argued more than 70 years ago applies to our world today - we would only be destroying ourselves by destroying other nations. In translating these papers by Benedict, we were deeply moved by how Benedict meticulously researched the history of racial prejudice and the history of war to find a way in which she could persuade the public to stop these self-destructive practices. We hope that by translating her papers, we would be able to convey her message to the Japanese audience.

翻訳