Parenting 101

Lesson 7: Dealing With Today's Tough Issues

Prejudice: An Ugly Subject

Prejudice, religious intolerance and homophobia cause pain and terror across the globe. No child is born prejudiced. It is a learned behavior. The monsters who slammed into the World Trade Center were religious bigots. They were raised from early childhood to believe in hating in the name of religion.

There is no excuse or room enough to justify this. We all have to work to eradicate this from human behavior. Prejudiced, intolerant parents raise like-minded children who may go out and commit crimes because of it. Even if they never commit an overt crime, they routinely spread their intolerance like a virus.

Can any of us justify hating anyone for the color of their skin, their gender, religion or disability? The moral answer is no. In order to stop the hating and violence, we need to help our children see people as individual and wonderful in their own unique ways.

I feel such sadness for any child, born full of wonder and delight at everything and everyone they see, who has had that innocence destroyed by a parent's intolerance. What a horrid, ugly thing to do.

My children have asked me many times why Muslims hate us so much. I have explained to them that most followers of Islam do not hate anyone. There are only a handful of power hungry fanatics. One of my neighbors referred to some other neighbors as ragheads in front of the boys. I explained to her they were Sikhs from India. She had made an assumption they were Arabic, and therefore subject to her scorn. VERY ugly.

This world gets smaller every day. Our children are going to have to be able to deal with all kinds of people and situations as adults. Don’t perpetuate intolerance. Help your child learn to appreciate other cultural, religious and racial points of view.

Ask your child’s opinions on different things like the issue of race or religion. Develop a plan for broadening his understanding of different cultures.

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