Educate, don t spread the hate
I recently read an article about a group of five teenagers who defaced a historic black schoolhouse in the United States with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti, demonstrating a complete lack of respect for a racial group that was, and continues to be, treated as second-class citizens.
The Virginian school, a dilapidated one-room 19thcentury schoolhouse that was used by black children during segregation, had swastikas, dinosaurs, sexual images and racial phrases graffitied on its walls.
The judge handed down an order that the perpetrators spend 12 months reading books that addressed some of history’s most divisive and tragic periods, including the holocaust, the country’s black segregation and political issues in Afghanistan.
It’s a story that made me smile, despite the damage that was done, and got me thinking about the importance that historical accounts, literature and personal stories of suffering have on educating people and changing their minds on an issue they were perhaps adamant about.
But as powerful as these notions may be, many people still seem to absorb messages based on ignorance and hate, and form dangerous opinions on a topic they haven’t properly considered or educated themselves about.
Take, for instance, the vicious, racially-motivated attack that took place in a Shepparton fish and chip shop on Monday, where a shop owner was punched in the face after defending his customers from racial abuse.
Or the constant videos that circulate throughout social media about verbally aggressive and sometimes violent racial attacks that take place on our city trains.
Many schools, organisations, workplaces and individuals in our communities condemn racism, and while we all know it’s wrong, it’s an issue that continues to trickle through the cracks, bulking up the hate and inequality that is always there, simmering away in the background.
Political leaders such as Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson and business tycoons like Dick Smith continue to spread that hate.
The vitriol spreads to those who feel disengaged and unsupported in our society, festering in families and clinging to the next generation who never bother to pick up a book or newspaper.
While it’s easy to blame immigrants for unemployment woes and Muslims for terrorist attacks around the world, it’s not easy to take back the hate being fed to our communities.
There is no easy answer for how to solve our world’s problems, but perhaps educating ourselves on issues in other countries, placing ourselves in the shoes of those unlucky enough to have been born in Afghanistan or Syria, or asking someone of a different race to tell you about the inequality they face, could be the key to ridding ourselves of some of our hate. ● Rhiannon Tuffield is a News journalist.