Ask most people why countries break apart and many will say that different groups sharing a single country naturally dislike and distrust one another. Yugoslavia fragmented because the Serbs and Croats and then the Bosnian Muslims started to fight each other soon after the Soviet Union collapsed. The citizens of Northern Ireland fought because Catholics resented Protestant dominance and discrimination. Ethiopia recently descended back into civil war because its various ethnic groups—the Tigrayans, Amharans, and those from the Sidama region—each wanted control of government. So fundamental ethnic, religious, or racial differences must be the cause of all these conflicts, right?
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Americans have a lot at stake in the answer to this question. Our country has become increasingly divided, with race now playing a central role in debates over policing, immigration, healthcare, even the teaching of history. Could the country fracture as a result of this polarization?
It turns out that differences themselves do not lead to violence. This is the finding of political scientists who have studied hundreds of ethnic conflicts around the world. Almost all countries around the world are multi-ethnic and religious and yet few experience civil war. In fact, most ethnic groups co-exist quite peacefully. Until 1992, Bosnia was a diverse nation where Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks lived together peacefully for decades. Education levels were high, and intermarriage was common and yet 100,000 people died during its civil war.
For a society to fracture along identity lines, you need mouthpieces—influential people who are willing to make discriminatory appeals and pursue discriminatory policies in the name of a particular group. They provoke and harness feelings of fear as a way to lock in an ethnic constituency that will support their scramble for power. These mouthpieces are often politicians seeking to gain or maintain power, but they can also include…
Source : time
