This chapter identifies and explores a discursive ordering which I shall call the ‘problematic of prejudice’. I intend to study this problematic in two of its guises: as a theoretical and analytic practice within social psychology and as a form of accounting within the discourse of Pakeha (white European) New Zealanders. I shall argue that the prejudice problematic, contrary to some of the avowed intentions of its advocates within the social sciences, fulfils some important ideological roles for Pakeha New Zealanders. Accounting in terms of prejudice can draw attention away from immediate social reform towards utopian visions; it can provide a logic and method for justifying individual conduct; and it can establish a positive identity and a benevolent ‘vocabulary of motives’ vis à vis other, supposedly less enlightened, individuals.

I use the term ‘problematic’ in this context because it suggests we are dealing with a relatively integrated framework of distinctive assumptions, intellectual strategies, questions and problems. The most integrated form of prejudice talk appears, of course, within the texts of social psychology. The ‘lived ideology’ is, as usual, much more fragmented, piecemeal and contradictory, caught up as it is in the kaleidoscope of common sense. In this chapter I use the intellectuals’ version to help chart a coherent path through the lay discourse.