Step 3: WE MUST REALIZE THAT ENDING HATE IS THE BEGINNING, NOT THE END, OF OUR MISSION: Occasionally, I turn on my television and am greeted by some celebrity exhorting me to stop the hate. I always wonder about the target audience for that particular broadside. I suspect that it is aimed mostly at people who don’t hate anyone – perhaps as a reminder of our virtue. I certainly can’t imagine a card-carrying member of the local Nazi group getting so fired up by the message that he turns to the television and exclaims, “Yes, you’re right, I must immediately stop the hate.”
Stopping the hate does little to bring people of different races or ethnic groups together. Certainly, it’s better than stoking hate; but discrimination and stereotyping are not primarily the result of hatred. If we tell ourselves that the only problem is hate, we avoid facing the reality that it is mostly nice, non-hating people who perpetuate racial inequality.
Ellis Cose
November 24, 1996, Newsweek