Economy
The High Price of Prejudice
The numbers don't lie: Prejudice isn't just morally reprehensible, it's economically punishing as well.
A Sunni terrorist detonates a bomb at a crowded Shiite shrine in Iraq. Political anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Russian Federation, even though most of its Jews have long-since emigrated. Millions of Central Africans have died because of the long-standing enmity between the Tutsi and Hutu peoples.
Prejudice is present in almost every community, but its levels and loci are constantly shifting. If Germany engineered the worst genocide in recorded history in the 1940s, it is a relatively tolerant place today. Lebanon, once noted for its cosmopolitanism, is much more divided now. What are the drivers of prejudice and tolerance? What makes them wax and wane?