Intolerance is demonstrated in many forms and is at the core of hate and violence. Unless we learn what to do about it, you may become a target.

In America during the 1600s, Quakers were imprisoned, banished and branded, while Baptists were whipped, had their ears cut off and tongues bored with hot irons because their belief systems were different from the majority of others'. In the 1800s, 1.5 million Irish Catholic immigrants were mistreated with violent acts against them and their churches because they were seen as a threat. When the thousands of Chinese laborers who built the Central Pacific railroad under deplorable conditions finished the job, they were subjected to more mistreatment by being confined to ghettos, lynched, and a law was passed so they could not become American citizens. Meanwhile, countless Native Americans were being slaughtered because they were viewed as savages — less than humans. How about the early 1900's auto manufacturing industrialist who bought a newspaper with a circulation of 700,000 and made all of his dealerships sell it, which promoted an ideology that claimed Jewish people were responsible for the causes of wars. Need I mention that by 1950 more than 3,000 African Americans had been lynched or burned in the name of justice? And today we have letters to the editor that read, "Homosexuals possess inherent knowledge of the immorality of their actions."

Why does it seem true that while the victims of intolerance change, intolerance itself remains the same? The class I am offering for fall 2000, IDIS 490B, "Hate and Violence," will explore these many issues with hopes of gaining insights on what we are doing to ourselves. Hopefully, we will learn how to avoid having any other groups, say, even seniors in management, become victims of oppression through such intolerance.