NCJ Number
180593
Editor(s)
Robert M. Baird,
Stuart E. Rosenbaum
Date Published
1999
Length
290 pages
Annotation
With essays that focus on timely issues such as gay bashing, school shootings, crimes against religious groups, and the spread of hate through the Internet, this book addresses definitions, origins, and explanations of intolerance some possible solutions for dealing with this phenomenon.
Abstract
The book opens with John Dewey's 1939 essay entitled, "Creative Democracy: The Task before Us." This essay provides an insightful vision of the social and moral dimensions of the ideal of democracy embedded in American cultural ideology, an ideology that is undermined by hatred, bigotry, and prejudice. The essays in Part Two are recent accounts of disturbing occurrences of hate and bigotry in contemporary American society, including not only responses to the murders of James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, and Barnett Slepian, but also a response to the recent tragedy of Columbine High School, where two students apparently filled with hate and fear took the lives of 12 of their classmates and one teacher before turning their guns on themselves. The essays of Part Three focus on issues of hate-crime legislation. Part Four explores the intellectual core of the issue of hatred through analyses of the nature of hate, bigotry, and prejudice. The essays in Part Five provide current explanations for the persistence of prejudice and bigotry, and the essays of Part Six explore the irrationality and immorality of some phenomena of bigotry and prejudice. The essays of Part Seven are suggestions about how bigotry and prejudice might be overcome, as well as how social problems that arise from bigotry and prejudice might be addressed. An 18-item select bibliography