Lauren E Brown & Richard Stivers. Journal of Black Studies. Volume 28, Issue 6, July 1998.
The three-step process of selecting a scapegoat includes social crisis, accusation and choice of victim. In the case of Sand Lake, popularly called “Nigger” Lake, and located southeast of Havana in Mason County, IL, a place became the scapegoat. Even though the lake was a symptom, and not the cause of devastating flood waters, the public turned on the lake without rational deduction and decided to drain it.
The term scapegoating has had three principal meanings that have not always been clearly differentiated: biblical, anthropological, and psychosocial. Originally, the scapegoat was a term used to refer to the first of two goats in the Leviticus ritual, the one chosen to carry (symbolically) the sins of the Hebrews into exile.
In the 19th century, anthropologists generalized from the biblical ritual and applied the term to a wide range of rituals, which later became a subcategory called scapegoat rituals or rites for the expulsion of evil. For at least 20 years, however, the anthropological use of this category has been moribund.
Finally, in everyday discourse, in journalism, and in popular literature, scapegoat is a term used to refer to those unfairly blamed for problems of any kind. This general psychosocial meaning has become predominate (Girard, 1987a, pp. 73-74).
Despite the fact that the psychosocial meaning of scapegoat is widespread, the term has been given short shrift in the social sciences. Two approaches characterize those who do not use scapegoat in an exclusively descriptive way. Some social scientists, often psychologists, have attempted to account for the motivation to scapegoat; others, usually sociologists, have examined the consequences or functions of scapegoating.
The typical theory of the motivation for scapegoating is the frustration/aggression theory. Here, frustration within the ingroup, whether due to internal conflicts or stress, creates a need for aggressive behavior, which in turn is displaced onto a member of or the entire outgroup. Gordon Allport (1958, pp. 325-333) observes that frustration does not always lead to aggression, that aggression does not invariably result in displacement, and that scapegoating cannot account for all forms of prejudice. Still, he devoted considerable attention to it. The famous study, The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1969), used the frustration/aggression theory to explain scapegoating. Allport (195 8) and Adorno et al. (1969) were instrumental in briefly bringing scapegoating before professional audiences and the public in the mid-20th century.
The consequences of scapegoating, however, have rarely been studied in part because they appeared obvious—an increase in hatred of and prejudice against those scapegoated. Or when the consequences have been studied, they are sometimes set within the general process of labeling someone deviant.
In a number of books on mental illness, for example, but especially in The Manufacture of Madness, Thomas Szasz (1970) analyzed the mental patient as scapegoat. He accepted frustration as the motivation for scapegoating, concentrating instead on its functions, which included group solidarity, a sense of superiority, and avoidance of one’s own involvement in evil (Szasz, 1970, pp. 260-275). Szasz explicitly made scapegoating a category of labeling within the deviance perspective in sociology (pp. 279-280).
But what if ritual scapegoating is the origin of culture and religion itself? And what if societal consensus rests on the choice of a common victim, the scapegoat? French literary critic turned social scientist, Rene Girard (1986,1987a, 1987b), has made these arguments and offered them as scientific hypotheses. If he is on the right track, the assumptions of the social sciences about social order will need to be reconstituted. His work, then, has enormous implications for sociology as a whole. Girard’s position is the opposite of the functionalist argument: first social order based on consensus, then scapegoating to reinforce that order. He argues that scapegoating brings about social order and its consensus. His theory of mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry on the psychological level is an alternative to the frustration/aggression argument and is quite specific about the interpersonal conflict that results in collective scapegoating. Finally, he demonstrates how ritualized scapegoating reinforces the extant order and helps to militate against the interpersonal conflict that gave rise to the scapegoating in the first place.
It is not our aim to test his larger theory or even to argue its greater merits as an explanation of scapegoating (Stivers, 1993). Our main interest is in his description of the three-step process by which a scapegoat is selected. By contrast, Allport (1958) had earlier argued that the choice of scapegoat simply varied with historical circumstances. One can accept Girard’s (1986) theory of the scapegoat selection process, however, and still leave open the question of his larger theory.
Racism and scapegoating seem to go together: The scapegoat is sometimes a feared and detested race, just as racism involves blaming the other and denying one’s own responsibility. Scapegoats are almost invariably imagined to be people or, on occasion, animals but rarely as geographical places. We argue that a place can act as a scapegoat when it becomes a symbol of the outsider, who is human. In this article, we wish to consider how a lake, symbolic of the African American as outsider, became a scapegoat for a community’s flooding problems.
The African American Grocer
About 135 years ago, an African American male operated a small grocery store just south of an ephemeral lake in the sand prairie southeast of Havana in Mason County, Illinois (“Old Stories,” 1993; Speckman, 1960). Why he selected this locality is unclear, but legend suggests that he was a driver of a circus wagon that became mired down in the road crossing the wetland. We suspect he avoided living in Havana (a river town) to escape racial prejudice and harassment. There is historical evidence that he both served whiskey and permitted card playing in the back of the grocery (this was not atypical at the time). Eventually, the wetland became known as “Nigger” Lake by local people, and it is still commonly referred to by that name. In 1993, local officials, who were applying for grants to alleviate the flooding problem, gave the wetland the name Sand Lake to avoid public embarrassment (W. Ingram, personal communication, July 1996).
The Great Flood of 1993
At approximately 20 to 40 year intervals (1888 [1898?], 1926 to 1927, early 1940s to 1946, 1972 to 1974, 1993 to 1994) Nigger Lake experienced substantial flooding and expansion much beyond its usual size, with overflow into Havana (Environmental Science and Engineering, 1993a, 1993b). A wet spring and summer in 1993 caused wet basements and failure of septic systems in certain areas of east Havana (Environmental Science and Engineering, 1993a). This foreshadowed far greater problems when, in September 1993, two particularly heavy rainfalls resulted in the area’s worst flooding in recorded history. The consequence was more than 171 groundwater lakes in Mason County (Clark, 1995), including a greatly expanded Nigger Lake. The latter overflowed northward, via roadside ditches (see Figure 1), inundating east Havana. Residential basements suffered significant structural damage, and many homes were nearly uninhabitable. Two schools as well as a number of commercial and industrial businesses were also adversely affected. Therefore, the entire community was directly or indirectly harmed by the flooding.
Citizens were frustrated, frightened, and sometimes angry; moreover, the large number of haphazard private meetings to discuss the flood suggests a community in a state of chaos. Eventually, a series of well-attended public meetings was held, and many individuals demanded with no opposition that Nigger Lake be drained. On at least three occasions at public meetings, several individuals argued without explanation that the water in Nigger Lake had come from Ohio and New York (W. Ingram, personal communication, December 1997).
Environmental Science and Engineering, Inc. (1993a, 1993b), was contracted to analyze the flooding problem and suggest solutions. The cause of the flooding in the Havana area was a high water table that had risen above ground level. This was a result of heavy rainfall, supersaturated sandy soils, limited topographic relief, poorly developed natural drainage systems, subsurface geology, and probably various other factors (Brown & Cima, 1998; Clark, 1995; Environmental Science and Engineering 1993a, 1993b; Sanderson & Buck, 1995). Hence, the Nigger Lake wetland was a symptom and not a cause of the flooding. Consequently, W. Ingram, Water Resources Engineer of Environmental Science and Engineering, pointed out that the drainage ditch would not alleviate, to a substantial degree, the flooded basements or other flooding problems unrelated to Nigger Lake (Williams, 1993). (Recall that east Havana was already having water problems in the summer of 1993 before the overflow of Nigger Lake in September 1993.) It was consequently questionable if the ditch would provide adequate relief to Havana. Furthermore, preliminary cost analysis by Environmental Science and Engineering (1993b) indicated that the benefits of the ditch are only about equal to the construction costs. Many local residents were unconvinced that Nigger Lake was not the cause of all of their water problems, in spite of repeated attempts of Environmental Science and Engineering to enlighten the community (W. Ingram, personal communication, December 1997). The public was obviously preoccupied with draining (and hence destroying) Nigger Lake, even though there was no rational reason to do so.
Environmental Science and Engineering suggested three short-term options that were implemented: sand bagging, pumping, and ditching. Although relief was not immediate, these measures (plus evaporation) eventually eliminated the flooding problem. Environmental Science and Engineering (1993b) also identified several long-term options that might help relieve future flooding. A drainage ditch extending from Nigger Lake along the east side of Havana and then into the Illinois River was most popular among local citizens. This plan was favored because it was perceived as a solution for draining Nigger Lake, and because it might also provide a means for draining east Havana (W. Ingram, personal communication, December 1997). The ditch was estimated to cost $1.3 million (Environmental Science and Engineering, 1993b). Efforts to obtain funding have so far been unsuccessful, but citizen concerns remain high, and planning continues (Brown & Cima, 1998).
For us, there is no solution to potential flooding given the extremely high water table of the area. The causes of the flooding were the large amount of rainfall and high water table combined with inadequate natural drainage. When there is no true solution to a problem, a group sometimes looks to a false solution as a way of reuniting the community.
Racism in Havana
Havana is a large small town with a population (Bureau of the Census, 1990) of slightly more than 3,600. It is primarily a working class community with four African American residents (one family), This is typical of towns this size in central Illinois; indeed, there are only eight African Americans in Mason County, which has a population of about 16,000. Havana is a former port town and, as such, may have witnessed a number of African Americans pass through over the years.
There are two kinds of racism: one that is direct and material, a result of a fear of and a desire to subjugate the other race’s potential physical, political, or economic power; the other, indirect and symbolic, a consequence of a fear of the other race’s standing as a degraded, inferior group. The two racisms are intimately connected.
It is indisputable, we think, that racism against African Americans has been virtually universal in American society. Alexis de Tocqueville (1850/1969, pp. 316-407) observed in the 1830s that the racism in the South was more direct—institutionalized in slavery and later in segregation—than that in the North. Nevertheless, Northern racism was not weaker; it was merely different. His argument was that as long as there are legal and other institutional barriers separating the races, the dominant race feels secure to establish informal relationships with the exploited race. The dominant race has nothing to fear, either materially or symbolically. When there are fewer institutional barriers between the races, as in the North, the dominant race is more fearful—less fearful of the economic and physical power of the exploited race and more so of being contaminated by a socially degraded, disreputable race. In the South, the relations between the races worked as long as African Americans knew their place and stayed within its boundaries. When African Americans deviated from Southern norms, the dominant race often expressed violent racist attitudes. Northern racism, although it was always capable of surfacing explosively, was often expressed in more subtle ways, such as covert discrimination, avoidance, and denial.
The African American was a symbol of degradation intensified by the relative lack of structural barriers in the North. The fact that some Northern residents (such as in Havana) rarely came in contact with African Americans does not diminish the fear and repugnance, because the latter are magnified by the lack of barriers between the races, not by the frequency of interaction. There is an inverse relationship, it appears, between structural barriers of discrimination and the intensity of fear of the dominated race as a symbol of degradation. The racist logic is that social contact with a so-called inferior race without strict regulations can lead one to catch degradation as a kind of contagious disease.
Havana is by no means exceptional. We are not suggesting that it is more racist than any of its neighboring towns. But the facts indicate that there is racism here. One native informant, a White female in her 20s, remembers that as a child she played a game called “Nigger knocking,” which involved several children knocking on someone’s front door and running away to hide before the occupant could answer the door. The informant maintains that the game was widespread in Havana but does not know the origin of the game’s name. She also claims that the road running near Nigger Lake was commonly referred to as Nigger Lake Road. She insists that Havana is a racist community.
A second native informant (the young woman’s aunt), a White female in her 40s, disagrees about racism in Havana. She maintains that Havana cannot be racist because it has an ordinance prohibiting African Americans from living there. (Whether Havana ever had such an ordinance, it likely had an informal norm to the same effect.) The racist logic is that one cannot be a racist if there is no one nearby to discriminate against.
Even without the observations of the informants, the name Nigger Lake and the legend about the “nigger” who operated a grocery near it are evidence that African Americans are still symbolic of contamination and degradation. There need not have been lynchings, beatings, or harassment for there still to have been racism in the town. Havana provides evidence of an indirect or symbolic racism widespread in American society.
Symbolism of Place: The Outsider
Keep in mind that the wetland (Nigger Lake) is geographically outside Havana (approximately 1 mile to the southeast of the city); therefore, the citizens do not regularly encounter the lake in their daily activities. The concept of outside, of course, can refer to more than physical space; it often is applied to social space as well. What is outside of our social space is different, foreign, and potentially dangerous to our way of life.
The history of comparative religion has long recognized that place has a religious meaning in traditional societies, which in part derives from an opposition between “our world,” the place we inhabit, and a “foreign, chaotic space,” peopled by outsiders, foreign spirits, and even demons (Eliade, 1961, pp. 29-32). Our world or place, whether a nomadic territory or a village, is sacred; by contrast, foreign space is profane, that is, without ultimate meaning. But it is not just a matter of intellectual contrast, that is, profane space versus sacred place. Profane place, the people who inhabit it, and its values threaten to desecrate the sacred place and its inhabitants. The main reason is that sacred space is the place where (our) nature or society was created. And creation is equivalent to good, just as the threat to creation is evil.
A symbol, whether a word, phrase, object, or event, possesses indirect meaning: It stands for something else. All symbols beyond their literal meaning have a figurative meaning. Water, for example, appears to be an almost universal symbol of fertility, birth, and rebirth. As evidenced by our example, symbols have multiple meanings that are nonetheless interconnected (Eliade, 1974). The indirect or figurative meanings of a symbol are formed by the comparisons and associations we make. Nigger Lake, for instance, is a lake that symbolizes the outsider, specifically, the African American, perhaps the most feared and detested outsider in American history. The lake or wetland has periodically invaded and polluted the physical structure of community, just as African Americans, it is imagined, can desecrate the social structure of the community.
Nigger is the master symbol of outsider to the community, we surmise, but there are additional secondary symbols. The master symbol organizes and gives further meaning to the secondary symbols, which in turn imply the former; the master and secondary symbols thus form a complex (Ricoeur, 1976).
Birders (amateur ornithologists) from other areas of the state frequently visit the wetland to observe the abundant avifauna. These individuals exhibit unusual behavior (they stand in a stationary position for long periods of time while looking through binoculars) and often wear unusual attire (strange hats and floppy jackets to hold field guides, snacks, etc.). Waterfowl are exceedingly abundant at the wetland, and the area has been attractive to hunters, as evidenced by the presence of duck blinds in the wetland. The area along the Illinois River has been of major importance to duck hunters for more than a century (Parmalee & Loomis, 1969). Many duck clubs have been established, and numerous hunters from Chicago are attracted to the area (Parmalee & Loomis, 1969). These sportsmen carry guns (a potential threat), talk faster, and have a different (foreign) accent. Speckman (1960) pointed out that whiskey drinking and card playing, which was probably accompanied by gambling, occurred at the original grocery store owned by the African American some 135 years ago. (On two separate occasions, local residents have communicated the same information to L. E. Brown [one referred to the store as a tavern].) Thus, the grocery store could probably be viewed in the same light as a roadhouse. Such establishments often had extremely bad reputations because they offered bootleg liquor, gambling, cock fighting, dog fighting, and so forth (Angle, 1952). Because roadhouses were located in rural areas, they were unregulated by village ordinances. Finally, some Havana residents voiced the preposterous belief that the local flood waters originally came from Ohio and New York. Supposedly, floods that occur in the eastern United States result in flooding at Nigger Lake and Havana at a later date (W. Ingram, personal communication, December 1997). Thus, there is substantial evidence that Nigger Lake has outside (foreign) characteristics that are disapproved of or feared by local residents of Havana. In summary, the lake symbolizes Nigger, master symbol of the outsider. In addition, the lake symbolizes bird watcher, wealthy duck hunter, roadhouse, and eastern United States (people in the Midwest often look on the East Coast as a problem-laden and unfriendly area).
We are not suggesting that simply calling the wetlands Nigger Lake would have been sufficient to bring about its status as scapegoat. Rather, it was all the ways the lake was used by outsiders in the present that allowed the symbol of nigger from the past to be inexorably connected to them. Symbolic connections are not logical but associational: Nigger equals wealthy duck hunter, eccentric birdwatcher, and so forth. At the same time, however, the hostility toward outsiders confirmed the latent racism in the community. The various associations among the meanings of a symbol are mutually reinforcing (Ricoeur, 1976).
Ritual Scapegoating
Nigger Lake is more than a symbol of the outsider, however; it is a ritual scapegoat. Although the concept of scapegoat was used in academic life as early as the 19th century, no one had satisfactorily worked out its larger theory until Girard (1986, 1987a, 1987b) discovered a connection between mimetic desire and ritual scapegoating.
Mimetic desire is desire complicated by competition for the object of desire. Desire becomes mimetic when one desires what someone else desires; the other becomes a model for me: I desire to be like the person who desires what I now desire. I am thus attracted to this other person. Concurrently, however, this other is a rival: We both desire the same object. The object of desire grows in importance as the competition for it intensifies.
My rival gives two messages: Be like me and do not be like me. The rival is flattered at first by imitation because everyone wants to be admired; the initial feeling of pride is quickly countered by the fear of losing the object of common desire. As a rival, the other is an obstacle to the realization of desire. Hence, I am repelled by my rival. Attraction and repulsion.
Mimetic rivalry is contagious, as is the violence it engenders. Violence is itself mimetic. I respond to your violent act with a similar act of my own. We become like each other in our violence. Still others enter the fray, because each momentary victory attracts new opponents. This is the mimetic crisis: the certain prospect of widespread violence with no apparent solution.
A solution emerges spontaneously, one that is the originary act from which ritual, religion, and society itself spring forth. The solution is a collective murder that both ends the violence and symbolically unties the remaining competitors—the killing of a common enemy, a scapegoat (Girard, 1986). What may appear as an arbitrary act is not recognized as such by the collaborators; the scapegoat is not recognized as scapegoat. For the act of ritual killing to be an effective agent of unification, it must not be recognized as an act of scapegoating. The scapegoat will be viewed as the source of all evil and, hence, as one who deserves to be killed. The murder of the scapegoat unites the members of the society by permitting evil to be expelled. Society cannot confront the arbitrary nature of its violence and of its own complicity in the contagious violence preceding the original act of scapegoating. Therefore, religious myths conceal the act of murder as scapegoating; instead, they represent the murdered as fully deserving to be killed. Simultaneously, however, the ritual victim is sacralized, transformed into a deity who now can be made to work for the benefit of society. For instance, in the Seneca myth of creation, after the good twin (the Creator) defeats his brother the evil twin (the Great World Rim Dweller), a pact is made between the evil twin and the Seneca (Wallace, 1969). In return for food and supplications, the evil twin would “cure incurable disease, avert deadly tornadoes, cast out malevolent witches, and bring order to a whole community” (Wallace, 1969, p. 92).
The originary act of murder is not just kept alive in myth; it is systematically repeated in ritual. The reenactment is often a dramatic enactment rather than an actual repetition of the originary act of killing. There may likewise be a substitution for the ritual victim—animals, even crops, may become symbolic surrogates. In Girard’s view (1987b, p. 32), then, the ambiguity of sacred value resides in this fundamental contradiction: Violence (evil) is the origin of order (good). If violence is sacred, it is so only because it is the source of unity, the order of all against one.
Ritual scapegoating in the modern era, however, does not deify the victim. Girard (1987b) comments on this in the following passage.
Religious phenomena are essentially characterized by the double transference, the aggressive transference followed by the reconciliatory transference. The reconciliatory transference sacralized the victim and is the one most fragile, most easily lost, since to all evidence it does not occur until the mechanism has completely “played itself out.” We remain capable, in other words, of hating our victims; we are no longer capable of worshiping them. (p. 37)
The farther away from its violent origins a community and its religion get, the more ritual scapegoating loses its meaning and purpose. The time comes when scapegoating will be justified for political reasons (Girard, 1986, p. 113). As scapegoating becomes political (secular), it becomes more widespread but simultaneously shallower. That is, scapegoating today can still generate hatred, but it is now directed toward a plethora of transitory victims.
What is most important for our purposes is Girard’s (1986) account of the dynamics of selecting a scapegoat: “stereotypes of persecution” (pp. 12-23). Scapegoating is actually precipitated by two crises; the second crisis, the more serious one, is a comment on the first. The initial crisis can be almost anything: famine, military defeat or victory, political conflict, hurricane, flood. But the real crisis, in the social sense, is the reaction to the first one. This reaction, whether violence, frustration, anger, or even ecstasy, tends to be uniform, which means that social differences have been momentarily eliminated. As Girard (1986) observes, every society is organized so that there is both unity and diversity; the latter is in fact a necessary component of the former. That is, customs, mores, manners, and behavior differ by class, sex, age, and so forth but exist within a larger culture that permits such diversity. The real social crisis is that virtually everyone acts the same in an emergency—hoarding food, looting, becoming violent or angry—and, in so doing, denies the extant social structure.
The reaction to the social crisis of homogeneity involves making an accusation and choosing a victim. The scapegoaters accuse an individual or group of some moral failure that caused the initial crisis. For example, during the 14th century, the Jews were accused of poisoning the rivers in northern France, which in turn resulted in the famous Black Death or Plague (the first crisis). The second crisis was the homogeneous way people reacted to the Plague—with suspicion, isolation, distrust, generalized anger, and violence. Often, the accusation is about an immoral act, in this instance poisoning, one of the most heinous crimes in traditional society.
Finally, Girard (1986) notes that there are universal signs for the choice of scapegoat. The victims are always those who are different, whether ethnically, culturally, or physically; moreover, these differences must be observable. The victims are chosen from among those who are marginal to society. In the above example, the Jews, who were marginal to Christian society, were the scapegoats. The victim or scapegoat is believed to be responsible for the first crisis, the Plague, but secretly the scapegoat is thought to be responsible for the second (social) crisis—the lack of differences in attitude and behavior.
Here is the crux of the scapegoating mechanism. By identifying a victim as the cause of the cause of disorder in society, as responsible for the original crisis (famine, plague, flood) that, in turn, leads to the crisis of contagious violent behavior, the scapegoaters are simultaneously establishing boundaries between the system and what lies outside and reestablishing diversity of action within the system. The scapegoat belongs outside the system because he or she caused the individuals within the system to shed their diversity and become dangerously alike.
Nigger Lake as Scapegoat
The narrative of how local residents reacted to the Great Flood of 1993 perfectly fits Girard’s (1986) theoretical description of the scapegoating mechanism: (a) social crisis, (b) accusation, and (c) choice of victim.
The residents of Havana experienced residential basement flooding, and several schools and businesses suffered flood-related problems; this is the first crisis. Subsequently, they began to act similarly—wildly uncertain with fear, frustration, and anger, they expressed hostile attitudes toward Nigger Lake; this is the second crisis.
Accusation and choice of victim are intimately related. One might argue that the accusation is framed in terms of what is commonly believed the accused (scapegoat) is capable of doing. The moral accusation against the wetland is that it deliberately polluted (flooded) parts of the community. We say deliberately because in refusing to listen to the scientific evidence that Nigger Lake was not responsible and in wanting it destroyed, the citizens acted as though they believed the lake was personally out to get them. And is this not because the lake symbolizes the outsider, principally the African American, the quintessential marginal group in American life? The lake is a surrogate scapegoat, the outsider poised to destroy the physical community only because, it is believed, African Americans have always been ready to pollute the social community. The citizens attempted to restore unity to their community by finding a common scapegoat. Although there was no readily believable human victim, a place with a history of marginality—Nigger Lake—was a convenient scapegoat. But it was a convenient scapegoat in large part due to its symbolic meaning. Scapegoating appears, unfortunately, to be an integral part of the social order, and it extends even to place.
The Basic Data and Their Fit with Scapegoating
We have relied on the following sources of data: the corroborated memories of an environmental engineer who attended the public meetings about the flood as a professional consultant; the historical record of newspaper stories about Nigger Lake; interviews with two native informants; and the observations that one of the authors, a biologist studying the wetlands, made about the usage of Nigger Lake. We examined 25 stories about the flood of 1993 in three different newspapers, but none of them revealed details about the content of the public meetings. Because we did not begin this study until 1995, we have neither participant observation data from the various meetings nor interviews with residents.
Yet, obviously it is not the quantity of data that matters most but the relevance of the data. The views that were spontaneously expressed at public meetings on the flood and in the aftermath are much better indicators of real sentiment than those that would have been expressed in an interview or questionnaire at a much later date. Moreover, we have the basic data necessary for an interpretation:
- The view at the public meetings, uncontested and seemingly unanimous, that the cause of the flooding problems was Nigger Lake, despite expert opinion to the contrary;
- The view, at the public meetings less widespread but still uncontested, that much of the water in Nigger Lake came from Ohio and New York; and
- The various kinds of outsiders (as observed by one of the authors) who dominate the use of Nigger Lake.
Because the wetlands popularly called Nigger Lake did contribute water to the flood of 1993, the townspeople’s attitudes about the wetlands causing the flood are seemingly rational, but the first two data taken together suggest that the dominant attitudes toward Nigger Lake are irrational. The last two data suggest that Nigger Lake is associated with outsiders (the water and its use). The second datum combines the irrational with xenophobia (fear of outsiders). The fear and hatred of water from the eastern United States is the key to understanding the other two data and the larger mystery of Nigger Lake. It demonstrates that the irrational attitudes are directed toward outsiders and that, because the attitudes toward outsiders are irrational, the outsiders symbolize evil. Scapegoating possesses all these characteristics.
Everyone who has studied scapegoating agrees that it is an unconscious, symbolic process. No one who scapegoats believes anything but that the scapegoat is a deserving object of rejection. We contend that indirect data, such as what we possess, are for certain issues, especially symbolic ones, much more important data than the direct data of interview and questionnaire. Keep in mind that shared symbolic meanings are indirect meanings that often arise spontaneously and unconsciously and that their partly unconscious character gives them their efficacy (Ricoeur, 1976). Our interpretation, which relies on the unconscious process of scapegoating, fits the data, but are there superior interpretations?
Alternative Interpretations
We have offered a plausible interpretation of the attitudes of some of the residents of Havana toward Nigger Lake. But there are more obvious interpretations. Could it be that the residents of Havana who attended the town meetings at which the causes of the flooding were discussed did not understand the engineers’ arguments, perhaps were even hostile to science, or simply preferred the evidence provided by common sense? Given the fact that the scientific explanations were couched in commonsense terms and were straightforward—high water table, poor drainage, and heavy rainfall—it is unlikely that they did not understand the engineers. It is improbable that they were antiscientific when they invited the engineers there in the first place. Attribution theory in psychology might suggest that there are discernible reasons other than scapegoating for why individuals make mistakes in perception about their environment. Attribution theory works on the psychological level, scapegoating theory on the sociological level. Fritz Heider (1958), one of the leading attribution theorists, states that sometimes the “affective significance” (p. 171) of an object or event can determine the attribution of causes, in this instance, the cause of the flood. When affect overwhelms intellect, attribution is a variant of rationalization. Attribution theory here actually supports our interpretation because townspeople can always rationalize their unconscious rejection of Nigger Lake when confronted by contrary evidence. Their rationalization is that the water that overflowed Nigger Lake caused the flooding problem.
Racism and scapegoating reflect, in large part, collective, irrational attitudes. No one admits to being a racist or a scapegoater. The victim always deserves what is done to him or her. Irrational beliefs are not susceptible to persuasion, at least by itself. A serious change in existential attitude demands a radical experience that runs contrary to the extant attitude.
To our mind, the most telling bit of evidence is the irrational attitude that the local flood waters, specifically those in Nigger Lake, originally came from Ohio and New York. This suggests, at a minimum, that some of the local residents felt the irrational need to blame the flood on an outsider. We have shown the multitude of ways in which Nigger Lake symbolizes the outsider. Therefore, the argument that Nigger Lake is at once a symbol of outsider and a ritual scapegoat is a more compelling interpretation than that of ignorance or antipathy to science.