Tag: discrimination

Then came Hitler (Quaker reflections, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

A continuing series by guest author Jean Gerard

I was raised in the early 20th century by a conservative middle class family.  My father educated himself and became a teacher of geology and geography in a large high school in Pittsburgh.

Unemployed during Great Depression
Store vacancies & unemployment during Great Depression. Photo by Dorothea Lange, in public domain.

Dependent upon coal and steel, Pittsburgh suffered from strikes, pollution, and racial and class tensions among social groups– the very rich, middle class professionals, and many immigrant poor.

Children observed or experienced discrimination every day:  the Italian boy who couldn’t speak or read English; the Jewish girl with the violin and the heavy accent; the eight Catholic kids who moved in next door. “I don’t know what you see in those people!” my older sister used to say.

Thousands of “working stiffs” were slaving for next to nothing in the mines and mills, under a system that, in spite of temporary reforms here and there, would persist and eventually destroy the very idea of “liberty and justice for all” to which I swore allegiance every morning.

During the Great Depression, teachers were lucky to keep their jobs. Consequently, every Saturday my father bought large sacks of groceries and gave them away to sad-faced, lost men slouching on sidewalks.

By the time Franklin Roosevelt  came on the scene, my family was split by the politics of middle-class prejudice. I came to see how changes of the New Deal improved the lives of some of my friends even while they enraged others.

Then came Hitler, screeching over radio static from Germany. His ovens turned his country (and the land of my ancestors) into a living hell. By the mid-1930s he had almost made a Communist out of me – but not quite.

I sympathized, but didn’t join any political party because I was too confused and individualistic to join anything. It never crossed my mind that I had the same instinctive fear of consequences that had kept Hitler’s people voiceless–and now again has brought most of us Americans to a state of voluntary amnesia.

I was a political coward. I refused to take responsibility for fear of risking my safety.  I remained an observer with a guilty conscience.

 

Do you know your rights?

Posted on by kathiemm

December 10 is Human Rights Day, a global day of observance, on which countries around the world honor the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in the wake of World War II.


Before you watch this video, consider the statements below. Check off the statements you think are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the United States is a signatory.

1. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

2. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

3. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

4. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

5. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.

6. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

7. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

8. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

9. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

10. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

To determine the level of your knowledge concerning universal human rights, view the video at the beginning of this post, or read the Declaration itself.

Give yourself one point for each item that you correctly identified as being included in the UDHR and subtract one point for each item that you incorrectly included in the list.

Please let us know how you did.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: What did it achieve?

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today’s post is written by Ross Berriman, a rising senior at Middlebury College in Vermont, majoring in psychology and sociology. He lives near Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and is currently a student in Psychology of War and Peace at Boston University and a regular commenter on this blog.]

Apartheid sign: For use by white persons
Image in public domain

When I was asked to comment on my views about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), I was immediately struck by how little I knew about the process. As a South African, I feel that I should know more about my country and its involvement in one of the most revolutionary reconciliation processes in modern history.

What shocked me even further was that I do not even remember learning or even talking about the TRC during school. In fact, the TRC seemed like something that people wanted to forget.

From the perspective of a white South African, I can understand this notion of wanting to put the past behind us, as it is shameful to think of what we and our forefathers did to generations of people of color. And yet, if I were a black person in South Africa, I might feel angry and frustrated that some of the enforcers and leaders of the regime have literally gotten away with murder.

I find it very difficult to understand the courage that it must take to be a person of color in South Africa and to forgive white people for centuries of injustice suffered at their hands.

Today South Africa is a beacon of light for countries experiencing conflict. It provides the world with a reason to believe that nations can overcome their pasts and move forward into peaceful democracies without discrimination, where everyone is respected by the constitution.

Personally, I think that the TRC was the best thing for South Africa, and I doubt that we would have had such a successful and peaceful transition of power and 17 years of freedom without it.

Ross Berriman