What to do about hate?

Please email me, post below, send it by carrier pigeon or in whatever other way that suits you, any suggestion on what to do about people who hate. I cannot get out of my mind the kinds of things that  were said to white volunteers who were canvassing for Barack Obama.  Some, in Indiana, were told, “Hang that darky from a tree!” while others faced such comments as “I’ll never vote for a black person” and “He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?”  In West Virginia, NPR reporters were told that Obama didn’t stand a chance because West Virginians “can’t stand the thought of a black man telling a white man what to do.” I cannot stomach citing more, but trust me, there were many more, each uglier and more hateful than the other.

A large number of Americans tell pollsters that they would not vote for a woman, a Hispanic, an Asian, an African American, or a Mormon—even if they grant that the particular person is qualified for the job.  A recent survey— to be released by Andrew Kohut this summer— shows that anti-Semitism is rising all over the world, including, out of all places, in Germany. Some years back, someone interviewed minority kids who visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. They said that they could not understand what all the fuss was about. The Jews, after all….

If you turn your eyes to the Middle East, not only do Christians and Muslims clash, but two kinds of Muslims-- Sunnis and Shi’ites-- slaughter each other (including killing children and women and pulling people out of hospitals if they are the “wrong” kind of Muslim). In addition, recently Shi’ites have been killing Shi’ites (in Sadr City and Basra, among other places). Actually, you do not have to look that far; if you read some of the comments posted here, they are not particularly loving.

Now, I did social science for fifty years. I am aware that there is a huge body of literature on hate—what drives it and some all too optimistic suggestions on what can be done about it. I know there are all kinds of sensitivity classes and consciousness raising courses, but they often do not work; indeed, some backfire. The main treatment that I am aware of that seems to work is to make those who spout hate walk in the other person’s shoes. 

A powerful example of how one can generate such experiences is the following account of what happened in a classroom in Iowa.  In 1968, a teacher decided that it would be inappropriate to hold a conventional discussion on the plight of black Americans shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Instead she decided to try to teach discrimination to her third-graders by affecting their experiences. The teacher divided her class into two groups by eye color—the blue-eyed students in one group and the brown-eyed in the other.  “Today,” she said one Friday, “the blue-eyed people will be on the bottom and the brown-eyed people on the top.”  She continued: “What I mean is that brown-eyed people are better than blue-eyed people.  They are cleaner than blue-eyed people.  They are more civilized than blue-eyed people.  And they are smarter than blue-eyed people.”  Blue-eyed children could not use the nearest water fountain nor go to the yard during break. They were ignored during class discussions.

The experiment’s effects were swift and severe.  “Long before noon, I was sick,” the teacher recalls.  “I wished I had never started it…. By the lunch hour there was no need to think before identifying a child as blue- or brown-eyed.  I could tell simply by looking at them.  The brown-eyed children were happy, alert, having the times of their lives…. The blue-eyed children were miserable.”  In short, the children had learned through experience what discrimination is like. 
The children were deeply affected by the exercise.  A blue-eyed student reported that she “...felt dirty.  And did not feel as smart as [she] did on Friday.”  Another student wrote: “I do not like discrimination.  It makes me feel sad.”

The mother of one of the students reported, “My mother-in-law stays with us a lot, and she frequently uses the word ‘nigger.’  The very first time she did it after your lesson, my daughter went up to her and said, ‘Grandma, we don’t use that word in our house, and if you’re going to say it, I’m going to leave until you go home.’  We were delighted.  And it worked, too.  She’s stopped saying it.”

Such experiences leave strong and lasting impressions.  In 1984 the class had a reunion.  They vividly recalled their 1968 lesson.  Former student Susan Rolland noted that “I still find myself sometimes, when I see some blacks together and I see how they act, I think, well, that’s black…. And then later—as I said, I won’t even finish the thought before I remember back when I was in that position.”  Other students reported that their career choices were influenced by the discrimination experience.  Several chose as a result to join the Peace Corps or work with other cultures overseas.

Very compelling—until you ask how one can take millions of people and get them to participate in such an exercise.  So I am back where I started-- not a good place. Anyone out there, any suggestions?

Comments

[(The Other) Katherine Harris]

I was led here by your "Economic Suicide" piece at Huffington Post, Dr. Etzioni, and have been reading your essays with interest and admiration. Thank you.

About the 1968 exercise, I fear it was so effective because it took place in 1968. I was 18 then, a college girl who'd grown up in a time of increasing freedom, educational opportunity and prosperity -- the sort of atmosphere that breeds goodness. Of course there were some nasty people, but they didn't hold the reins of power. Instead, the greedy and bigoted were exposed for what they were. And duly shamed.

As you know, all of that was soon turned 'round by reactionaries with bottomless pockets. Their intent was to reverse the economic and political power gained by working people since the Depression, but their first order of business was corrupting the media: gutting it of truth by making everything a matter of opinion. Eventually they controlled news altogether, while also holding down wages, making higher education harder to obtain, fostering misplaced resentments and fears, developing a grotesque police state, distorting the financial system and generally robbing us blind for the benefit of a few. The majority have been on a four-decade slide -- sliding precipitously through three of them.

Our circumstances today do NOT conduce to goodness. Desperate people aren't known for high principles, are they?

I do take some comfort in the Obama campaign, which is evoking the good angels of many -- but he, too, is far cozier with big money than bodes well.

[Prozium]

I have an interesting story to tell. For about six years, I was involved (at least from a distance) in what you would describe as the "hate movement" in America. As it happens, I also became a fan of yours during that time. The solution is to engage these people in an honest dialogue about race, not to bottle them up and isolate them at the fringes of society.

I'm positive that White Nationalism can be reformed. There is something virtuous about caring for the welfare of an entire race or ethnicity. It is hard enough to get hyper individualistic Americans to care about the future of their own descendents or their neighbors who live across the street.

The White Nationalists need their own space and encouragement to rehabilitate their own culture and communities from the sewer of consumerism. Many of them would be natural counselors or social workers. In more normal times, we would not demonize WASPs for trying to connect with their own heritage.

Humans have needs. A sense of identity, a sense of purpose, and a sense of place are amongst these. At the present moment, the conservative movement has monopolized the political energy of Southern WASPs while denying them all of the above. The road out of conservatism and the GOP is through a reformed White Nationalism that is communitarian in tone.

[Realist]

What to do about 'hate'? I'd say that you use the term 'hate' here a bit too loosely, that is to say that you are equating 'hate' with ethnocentrism and wariness or suspicion toward outgroups (i.e. other racial or ethnic groups).

You take the short view and seem to be stuck in the postmodern milieu where acceptance of 'multiculturalism' has become sacrosanct, where to question this unrealistically utopian multicultural ideal means that one is a horrible racist and a terrible person.

However, if you reach back thousands of years during which most of human history transpired and when our deepest collective instincts were inculcated within us you will realize that ethnocentrism (what you term 'hate') was a perfectly accepted and ordinary part of life for the large bulk of human history, simply because if a group was too accepting of other ethnic/racial groups they often didn't last very long as they were seen as weak or disorganized by neighboring tribes/groups and were often taken over or assimilated by the more cohesive (or ethnocentric) group/tribe, therefore eventually ceasing to exist.

Far from being vilified throughout human history, ethnocentrism was expected and encouraged within all group members because to be too lax in such matters meant that group solidarity would be weakened. Thus, ethnocentrism is a perfectly healthy and natural group-survival response in ALL human ethnic/racial groups because to be too accepting of other ethnic/racial groups meant the eventual dissolution of your own group.

You can witness anthropological echoes of this in the often more blunt and blatant ethnocentrism of young children who haven't been taught not to voice those 'opinions' yet; you can see it in the way which ethnocentrism is heightened in pregnant women (http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fessler/pubs/NavarretePregEthnocentr2007.pdf); and from the obvious fact that people still overwhelmingly gravitate toward their own ethnic/racial group when mating or living (e.g., neighborhoods and schools are still very segregated). The aforementioned examples are no doubt throwbacks to primordial group attitudes which lie within us all but which have been demonized only in recent decades in America and Europe. And in terms of the horrendous double standard currently operating in The West...Westerners are supposed to be forever 'tolerant' and 'accepting' of everyone else in the world while the vast majority of these same people certainly take the exact opposite view in their own cultures and societies.

You can take the Japanese (and many others) as an example. Though their collective ethnocentrism has certainly waned in recent decades, they still have a definite group antipathy toward other ethnic/racial groups living in their midst because without a doubt they realize the social instability that 'multiculturalism' invariably causes if carried too far. And what has been the result of Japanese ethnocentrism? Some of the lowest rates of crime in the world, the longest life-span, one of the best health care systems, nearly the most equitable income distribution in the world, very strong family/social/business ties, and so forth. There are certainly some negatives that come with this ethnocentrism, but any impartial observer realizes that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

As briefly mentioned above, in places like the USA or the UK (which are increasingly multicultural - at least in the urban areas) you can see that people still gravitate toward their own ethnic/racial groups in terms of mating/partnering, living arrangements, business relations, education, etc. However, because the sense of an ethnically cohesive group consciousness has been lost and anything goes nowadays, these multicultural cities are increasingly chaotic, disorganized, and crime-prone, and marred by shocking inequalities in wealth and life opportunities; however, the exact opposite can often be found in the more ethnically homogeneous rural areas which surely remain closer to your 'communitarian' ideal than the multicultural cities.

Just study your history: the slow decay of empires and nations can often be traced to ethnic strife and conflict as those nations or empires become increasingly diverse or 'multicultural' (these empires often ending in a bloody balkanization), while the longest lived and most stable cultures/empires/nations are marked by their ethnic/racial homogeneity and ethnocentrism. Largely because of increasing ethnic tensions the USA is currently a teetering Tower of Babel just as the Soviet Union once was, and I fear that it will eventually meet the same fate as the Soviet Union: increasing social/economic/political instability followed by ethnic/racial balkanization, which will lead to the growth of ethnocentrism followed by discrimination and eventually outright racist violence.

However, I must qualify all of this by saying that I do not agree with the sense of cultural/racial/ethnic supremacism which is often held by relatively homogeneous empires or nations, nor do I condone the violence that they might commit toward ethnic/racial minorities living in their midst.

[Valerie]

What to do about hate? Take the label off. Don't think black man, weak woman, old man, bum - think human being, human being, human being.

[jordan 1 flight low]

In order that people may be happy in their work,these things are needed:they must be fit for it; they must not do much of it; and they must have a sense of success in it. Do you understand?

[College Term papers]

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