scapegoat
scapegoatOne blamed, punished, or stigmatized for the misdeeds of others, after the classic atonement tale in Leviticus 16, in which one of two goats was sent into the wilderness after having the sins of the people symbolically placed upon it. Scapegoating theory has been developed in social science to examine the basis of prejudice (as in the work of Gordon Allport), and is implicit in much deviance theory, especially labelling theory and the work of Émile Durkheim on the functions of deviance. Thomas S. Szasz uses it in The Manufacture of Madness (1970) to explain the hostility towards the mentally ill.
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