During our college days, if you still remember, what would be your reaction when you were told that students from other similar colleges are performing better than ours? There would create a sense of dissatisfaction, probably not because of our college’s bad performance, but because the others are doing particularly better. For us, the other college students are foreigners and we don’t like them to indulge in our activities. To put in a broader view, people from other states would feel a sense of uncertainty if they haven’t been treated properly in the foreign states. The same thing would happen in other countries also. This is common when we travel across the globe. Human mentality has the habit of rejecting whatever is foreign to them. This could be attributed to the term Xenophobia.

The word Xenophobia has been derived from the Greek root Xeno meaning Strangers or Foreigners and Phobos that literally translates into fear. In short the term is used for the fear or hatred one feels towards another who happens to come from foreign land. Even though the concept is almost similar to racism, both are different in some ways. While racism is purely of the difference in colour, culture or classes, xenophobia originates because of the fear of being intimidated or colonized by someone from other places. In short the main factor of Xenophobia is the place a person is from.

As A Basic Human Instinct

Xenophobia is present in the life we live. From our childhood, we are taught not to indulge with any strangers. This advice might be intentionally for good, but could lead to a basic mentality in our brain to reject strangers in the future. If a small advice could make a huge impact in one’s life, think about those societies or countries especially in medieval times, having been told to keep away from some other societies or countries. One of the best examples would be the India-Pakistan relationship. From our early childhood, we have seen or heard everything bad about the other country that when we grew up, that instinct would grow with us, reaching its peak. 

So, every human being has the effect of Xenophobia. This is the result of our mode of political, economical and societal systems and the way they operate. Even animals too have this sort of behaviour. A group of dogs might not include another dog, which they might have considered foreign. The same goes to the herd of Elephants or any other animals. Every living being finds it difficult when a foreigner comes to their space. Xenophobia could be considered as a basic instinct by living beings.

Transformation Into Racism

The fear of strangers or foreigners might be good to a certain extent. It might help us to keep the group in unity and preserve what is theirs. But after certain limits, there would be problems. In human’s case, there are problems that arise because of these instincts. After a while of this hatred or fear for strangers, it could change into something worse, like reaching a phase where Xenophobia changes into Racism where the hatred would be to a particular culture or a class of people or worse, according to the colour of the people.

Racism had been a major problem in the twentieth century world. Even though it had reduced to a large extent nowadays, we could see the same practices at some corners of the world. People sometimes distinguish others on the basis of colours. The apartheid which was common in the African continents in the twentieth century could be the best example of racism. It was evident in most of the other Asian countries also during those times. These racism always comes from the idea of Xenophobia, which could be present in an individual’s mind from childhood itself. The small fire could become large as we grow up. 

Conclusion

Xenophobia actually does not stand for racism. It actually denotes the basic mentality of humans to differentiate domestic and foreign elements from our life. But as applicable to everything, there is a side effect to this behaviour. That is the plague called racism. If our human mind cannot understand the difference between the two terms, they might conclude that both are the same. There the problem lies. All I could say here would be to understand these two meanings separately and decide what the terms actually stand for. It requires only a small amount of fire to catch a big wildfire. So, it is our duty to check whether our mind does not have any of that small ignition fire and if there is, it is still our duty to eliminate the fire that could destroy a race.