Racism and Violence

We are empowered over violence when we can prevent it or stop it from recurring.

Violence occurs on a scale from domestic abuse to full-blown war. The overall goal of preventing or ending violence will need to be based on different approaches for different contexts.

If you were given the task of preventing violence in a school, in a family, or between warring nations think of the different type of people involved and the differing scale on which you would focus on.  Different activities would be necessary to help two warring armies end a war versus addressing domestic abuse in a family.

The task of trying to end racism, hate, and violence is truly monumental.

The overall task needs to happen on a global scale with actors from every level of society. It involves changing power structures, making cultural adaptations, political changes to allow the growth of democracy, redistributing resources, development to ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met, social work to change perceptions about others, and facilitating healing between deeply wounded and divided populaces.

Therefore, some activities that help fulfill this goal include:

• Peace education;
• Development work;
• Lobbying to change laws;
• Creating zero-tolerance policies (i.e. making schools, homes, and workplaces completely nonviolent);
• Enforcing policies and laws related to nonviolence;
• Working with individuals to help them connect to others;
• Cultural Exchanges to increase inter-group understanding;
• Reducing the gap between the haves and have-nots;

One aspect of moving beyond hate, racism, and violence is to change our worldview. By developing a global worldview, it is easier to recognize that we are one humanity – regardless of our individual differences. That is, we have more in common with others despite the differences that separate us.

Clearly this is a task larger than any one person, organization, state, or government can achieve on its own –  therefore, it is an ongoing everyday task that needs to be undertaken and accomplished by every single individual one of us starting right now!

While the task seems daunting at first, we need to be confident in the fact that because we live in an interconnected world, even the small things that we do are having a positive effect - - even if we can’t immediately see it.