Winter is a hard time of year for many people, students not excepted. More students see counselors in Dick's House during the winter than any other time of the year. It shouldn't come as a surprise that many of the worst expressions of hateful and anti-social behavior take place during the winter term. Anti-Semitic and misogynist incidents in Dartmouth dormitories during February were the most disturbing reminders that troubled people live among us.
What thoughts could such behavior reflect? Hatred for individuals in the dorms? Perhaps, but probably not. General anger, loneliness, depression, and insensitivity? Probably so. Have the perpetrators themselves been victims of disrespect? Almost certainly. While profiles are inaccurate generalities, most bigoted people see themselves as the victims of injustice and disrespect.
Would the individuals who committed these acts feel sorry if they understood the hurt they caused to people with faces and feelings? I would like to think so. Would they be less likely to commit similar acts if others would help them understand their hypocrisy? Perhaps.
My grandmother could not abide Catholics. She was beside herself when my mother's sister married a Catholic. I did not learn this until I was in high school, long after my aunt's marriage, and long after my grandmother had developed a close relationship with my uncle. I never understood my grandmother's feelings, but through conversations over the years I gathered that she had always felt that Catholics believed themselves to be both exclusive and superior, and that this implied (for my Grandmother) a disrespect and prejudice by Catholics toward non-Catholics. Until my uncle married my aunt, my Grandmother never had to face her hypocrisy. But for their marriage, my Grandmother may have remained a bigoted anti-Catholic.
Bigoted people can change, but I believe they need help. This help is a collective responsibility of the community. If you care about the community, you must care for each person within it. You cannot, without showing your own hypocrisy, lament the state of the community while you huddle with a closed circle of friends. Meet someone. Talk with someone new. Treat everyone you bump or pass on the street as a neighbor. We are all responsible.
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