Shortly after the 1990 Oslo conference The Anatomy of Hate, essayist Lance Morrow penned an essay on why hate is so difficult to discuss. “Hate is simultaneously a mystery and a moron. It seems either too profound to understand or too shallow and stupid to bear much analysis. . . . The subject is amorphous, disorderly, malignant.”
No serious scholar of hate will deny hate’s mysterious, moronic, and malignant properties, but discuss it we must. That urgency is what inspired the convening of 15 interfaith leaders at the White House last month. I spent the day with rabbis, imams, and Christian clergy who had come together to learn as much as we could about the character of hate and the role religious communities play in building a more humane world. Refreshingly, no mention was made of the turbulent presidential campaign or the incoming administration.
Regardless of the recent uptick in hate crimes directed at particular racial and religious minority groups, hate is hardly a new human experience or modern American idea. Two hundred years before the Oslo conference, President George Washington wrote to a Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, underscoring why “happily the government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, [and] to persecution no assistance.” Reinforcing that duty of government remains the responsibility of all of us.
