The Importance Of Anti Hate Groups

By Lena Stephenson


A lack of understanding about the differences between people often leads to fear and intolerance. Those who are living in fear often gravitate towards others with the same fears. There is a myth that ignoring these groups of people is the best policy. In fact, when left unaddressed, these sentiments tend to grow and often lead to acts of intimidation and end up in hate-related violence. Many anti hate groups have arisen to stand up against this.

Some of them are large and others are small. Some support specific minorities such as Asians. Others deal more widely with racist issues. A recent area causing concern is intolerance and bigotry on the internet and this is being monitored. There are those that try to protect human rights in whichever way they can do this.

Groups like the Klansmen, Aryans, black separatists and white nationalists have attracted the attention of a number of dissatisfied young people. There are those who feel that to give such organizations any attention at all just adds to this attraction. Experts disagree with this sentiment and say that ignoring them does not solve anything. There behavior needs to be exposed.

Organizations like this are usually highly active and exploit every possible situation to spread propaganda, intimidate, vandalize property and even kill people. Young people do join these organizations and in fact an alarming percentage of victims and perpetrators of violence are young people. This is why deterring, preventing and reducing hate-related juvenile violence has become so important to many organizations.

They feel that young people need to be encouraged to bring issues like diversity and prejudice out into the open and discuss them. Parents can help to do this too, getting their children to talk openly about discrimination against other religions, races, genders and sexes. Educators in the schools are also influential when it comes to addressing these issues. They have the perfect opportunity to follow programs that are often distributed freely to them by organizations and bring about change.

Many parents and teachers do not know the best way to address such issues. This is why organizations distribute all sorts of material to help them. Many of them do this freely as they have support in the form of donations. Documentary films, books, videos and even lesson-plans provide ways to help them to make children aware of stereotypes and help them to understand their own prejudices. This can help to create a different climate in a school of acceptance and safety.

Various means are used by different organizations to fight against injustice, hatred and bigotry. Apart from efforts to address the education of young people, legal actions are also taken on behalf of victims such as prison inmates who have been abused or exploited workers. Some even offer material to help in educating law enforcement officials on how to prevent and intervene in hate-related incidents s they are usually the first line of response.

When a country is going through emotional turmoil, groups propagating racism, bigotry and intolerance usually grow as people are looking for any possible scapegoat to blame for their financial woes. Politicians and the media tend to exploit the situation too. Groups standing up against the perpetrators of violent crimes need to be supported as they are fulfilling an important role and dealing with issues that simply cannot be ignored..




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