America Can Be a Violent, Hateful Place: One Group Is Fighting Back

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http://www.alternet.org/america-can-be-violent-hateful-place-one-group-fighting-back



Do most Americans grasp just what a violent culture we live in? Probably not. As Tim Wise said about deeply embedded attitudes of white supremacy, “a fish doesn’t know it’s wet.” Our culture and our history are saturated with violence starting with genocide against first peoples’ and the brutality required to build and maintain an economy based on slavery.

In my lifetime, the US has been waging war somewhere on this planet virtually every day of my life. US rates for homicide have long been among the highest per capita in the world. Scan the listings for TV shows or video games with an eye to how much violence propels the massive entertainment industry. Non-stop news coverage of violence in other nations contributes to the sense that this is just "the way things are.” Our immersion in violence is so pervasive it’s understandable that most would think the extent of it is normal.

Most perhaps, but not all. The history of our nation also includes the courageous struggle of the abolitionists to change the attitudes and behaviors of slavery. Later came a fight against lynching. Then the dismantling of Jim Crow apartheid by the civil rights movement.

Over the last 20 years a group called Not In Our Town (NIOT) has shown a community-based way to combat hate crimes. It began in Billings, Montana, where white supremacists had launched a series of attacks on minorities. In one incident, they threw rocks through the bedroom window of a child whose home displayed a menorah.