Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics

by Kay Whitlock

Other authorsMichael Bronski
Hardcover, 2015

Status

Available

Publication

Beacon Press (2015), Hardcover, 184 pages

Description

"Hate haunts the human imagination. As a society, the United States has created a "hate frame" through which we view the world. It provides a concept, a language, and a set of cultural images and narratives that help us attribute motivation for violence, slot different segments of the population into tidy categories of "us" and "them," and justify enmity. Violence against marginalized and vulnerable communities - people of color, queers, women, people with disabilities, Muslims, and Jews - is said to be the result of hate, and the most popular remedy for it is more policing and harsher punishments. But is hate the right diagnosis for the violence that is so prevalent in American society? Does it help us reduce or prevent violence? How does it shape our understanding of innocence, guilt, and justice? How does it influence the way we assign people into the roles of "victim" and "perpetrator"? Considering Hate makes the case that the hate frame distorts our understanding of violence directed against vulnerable groups, obscures our ability to trace that violence to its sources, and impedes our ability to address the conditions that produce it. By anchoring us to simplistic political and cultural notions about violence and justice, the hate frame may do more harm than good. "--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
In a nuanced look at history, hate, and perceptions of hate, Whitlock and Bronski present their case for thinking about changing the way we talk about hate and use the idea of hate, let alone the word, discussing how our use of the idea of hate actually affects our ability to think about and
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approach issues of crime and violence. Through discussions of everything from famous 'hate crimes' on to discussions of popular culture (particularly film) and changes in socio-political culture, the authors give an unflinching look to what has changed and what hasn't changed, as well as what must change.

Thoughtful readers will find a great deal to admire here, and a great deal which is capable of provoking thought. Whether you disagree or agree with their points, this is one of those books which should be read, and which will provoke discussion. There are, of course, no easy answers in the pages, but there may well be worthwhile suggestions for how we can disrupt the current and seemingly fruitless discussions, and move on to progress real change.

Recommended.
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LibraryThing member dorisannn
This is a book which I didn't know I was waiting to read. Hate seems so prominent in our world. The authors, both long-time activists study the idea of hat and violence in our times and those that have gone before. They also share the words and ideas of great minds through history on this topic.
It
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also looks at popular culture, especially movies and tv with an especially riveting discussion of both the novel and movie, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.
The first two thirds of the book is depressing as they described hatred of different kinds....from the fear of those who are different, cultural biases, and the institutional collusion and approval by law enforcement, military, the prison system and even some of our schools.
And the reader understands how good people accept some of these things like racial profiling, torture, etc. It is, after all, the government's job to keep our society safe from the "evil doers." And with the thought that not all Klan men and women or Nazis were evil.
But there are ways to stop the cycle, but it demands the changing of our institutions, culture and even our psyches to make this world what it could be. And they give examples of some changes good people are trying to make.
There is little doubt that evil, violence and hatred will continue to be bred in our societies unless we make some meaningful changes.
I'd recommend this book to everyone I know, especially public librarians who can see that it is more widely disseminated. Thanks to the authors for their words of wisdom and their attempt at seeing the solution to hate.
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LibraryThing member tungsten_peerts
Truly remarkable. Whitlock and Bronski take on one of the more seething social issues of all time and attempt to solve it in under 150 pages. In my opinion they don't quite succeed, but this should not detract from the power or nobility of their effort.

The authors present a convincing argument that
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our knee-jerk tendency to frame certain violent acts as "hate crimes" obscures the larger picture: that existing power structures and pervasive human flaws engender, nurture and feed such acts -- and that what is needed in order to make things better is not MORE punishment, MORE incarceration and MORE suffering, but an emphasis on healing and an acceptance of our own responsibilities. This last will, I expect, be the most difficult to accomplish.

I particularly enjoyed how this book managed to be both dispassionate (on a passion-inducing topic) and razor-sharp. On the down-side, there are longeurs in Considering Hate, which is a bit odd considering its brevity, but I think this is due to the fact that the emphases are somewhat out of balance. The material on the depiction of hate in culture (and especially film) is interesting, but there is perhaps too much of it, and not enough of the "well, how do we change things?" -- at least on a practical level. Whitlock and Bronski all but hand things off to the reader and tell him/her to figure it out.

Make no mistake, though. This is a book to lend. I am just greedy, and wanted more.
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LibraryThing member Bidwell-Glaze
Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics; by Whitlock and Bronski; is another great Beacon Press book. It is too short, but packed full of what matters.

Considering Hate made me stop-look-listen and reconsider how hate works in my life and communities. From
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the beginning, the author's notes, where I was reminded of the social justice and non-violence training riddle of “Who am I without a hated and inferior enemy to hold up a mirror so that I may see my own face?” to the last page “This is an undertaking that promises both possibility and pain.... Without disruptive intelligence that seeks a transformation of consciousness, no lasting structural change is possible.”, the book was full of ideas, suggestions, new to me understandings, and ideals I want to follow. The book intrigued, warned, and clarified things for me.

The whole idea of being responsible for actions I did not do had always seemed odd to me. Moral, but odd. While reading the book, with its explanations and examples, I begin to understand it. I think, the idea is that by helping maintain, or even by failure to embody and work towards other options, I help make the ones who react violently know that their actions are socially acceptable.

This book introduced me to new thoughts and new ways of dealing with harassment, bullying, and violence in my personal communities and the community where I live. I want to keep working on this idea and its possibilities. That is what makes a great book, in my opinion, one that inspires a person to go beyond their comfort zone into a new reality. There are many passages in this book that will end up in my Loose Leaf Bible, where they will continue to inspire me for years to come.

The second chapter, “Hate in the Public Imagination” seems to me to be a long list of movies and TV shows that I have never heard of. But as I grew up in a house without a TV, and the family only went to one movie a year, if that, and that is not indicative of how other, more common households exist, others may understand that chapter better. It may seem odd that give 5 stars to a short book with five chapters, one of which I don't understand. I am, however, sure that even were this chapter to be totally removed, this book is worth the stars. For an individual who knows what “Westerns”, “Blaxploitation”, and “Slasher”, among other terms, are, the chapter probably makes perfect sense and the 5 would be 5+.

As usual in truly academic level books, it includes an index and chapter notes detailing from exactly where its specific quotations or definitions come. As usual in Beacon Press books, it includes a section guiding the reader to books, videos, and online articles to help continue study and action beyond this book. Considering how short this book is, these are going to be necessary for me.
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LibraryThing member GAGVLibrary
Considering Hate is a classic academic perspective on "hate." There are a few insightful passages, such as the retrospective on the role of "hate," racism, xenophobia, etc. over the first century of movies. There are careful definitions of a few key terms, like "goodness," although there is no
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explicit definition of "hate." In general the authors encourage a systemic perspective, and an activist orientation, rather than a demonizing or hopeless attitude. Liberal arts types will respond well to this discussion. For the rest of us, our eyes glazing over gets in the way of the message, and we would do better to look for a short-form essay from the authors.
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LibraryThing member dmerrell
An intellectual look at how a culture of hate has evolved across time and manages to persist. Focused on providing insight and the potential for change, the book is at it's absolute best when it brings to light examples of hate, violence, retribution, forgiveness and change. A must read for those
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interested in cultural change and how media and fear shape our daily lives.
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LibraryThing member JBarringer
I won this book through a Goodreads First Reads giveaway. As a reader with a graduate background in political theory, I figured this book sounded like it could easily have been assigned reading for one of my courses, and actually I have read books by these authors for a gender and public policy
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political theory course. So, I had some idea what to expect.

I liked the central questions in this book, especially the notion of looking beyond hate to find more complex, more approachable roots for hate behavior. I was not entirely convinced about the authors' definitions for goodness and justice, and I was annoyed that hate was never actually defined. Still, this book raises interesting questions for discussion.

My biggest issue with this book is structural. I had the feeling that the authors, and maybe their test readers as well, were so close to their subject that they could supply the thesis sentences for each section out of their own existing knowledge of their subject. Certainly, with enough effort I could put together what the thesis statements ought to be for each section, but quite often throughout this book the text launches into the middle of each argument without actually stating clearly what the point is, let alone restating clearly the primary arguments in each section and chapter as conclusion paragraphs. Since this book also has very few subheadings, and it rambles and babbles along towards its general theme, it is easy to get lost.

In addition, many of the assertions I found most in need of support citations had none, so while the authors did a fair job of balancing the needs of academic readers and the general public, there were quite a few vague generalities and bold but debatable assertions mixed in with the film analyses that bugged me. I found the segment in which the authors attempt to take on 'free-market' ideas and libertarianism particularly bothersome, because from this text it did not seem that the authors understand the difference between free-market libertarianism and crony capitalism, yet the economist they address is a libertarian, while the 'free-markey' capitalist changes they discuss in Chile sound more like some other flavor of pseudo-capitalism. Perhaps the authors could have made their case more convincing, but as it stands I was turned off by this sort of analysis, wanting a bit more precision and evidence of more nuanced understanding.

So, while I had too many issues with this book to rate it a 5, I did like enough of this book to rate it a 4, and I could see how it could be useful for political science and sociology courses. The writing style is decidedly academic, even without more complete in-text citations, so not all reders in the general public will appreciate this book, but most readers could get through this one if they read slower, in chunks, with a pencil in hand to make notes in the margins, and with a dictionary handy.
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LibraryThing member Shadow123
I was very excited for this book. I love Beacon Press and I spend a lot of time studying various social justice issues - this seemed right up my alley. But I finished it feeling underwhelmed and dissatisfied, although I'm not sure I could quite pinpoint why. The book seems "thin" - not just in
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terms of page count but in terms of really going deeply into any of the issues raised. The authors' only real references to culture are outdated movies that most people have never heard of and that they simply name-drop with no context and little explanation. There is no in-depth analysis here. The last chapter is the saving grace of the book, delving into how hate actually plays out in our modern society and what we can start to do about it. But the rest of the book is scattershot, with few real arguments being made and nothing delved deeply enough to really sink your teeth into. I couldn't figure out who the audience was supposed to be - if academics, then this is a watered-down masters thesis with no real analysis; if laypeople, then its tone just doesn't hit the mark.

The ideas here are good, and solid, but there wasn't enough substance here for me. It was a solid okay.
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LibraryThing member susanbooks
If you're politically aware of the world from a left perspective, none of this will be news to you. For those who aren't, however, it's a nice summing up of events that make the Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, so crucial. I'm not sure the authors really explored the idea of goodness with
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any depth. For that, I recommend Judith Butler And Athena Athanasiou's Dispossession.
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LibraryThing member lanewillson
I had selected Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness, and Justice in American Culture and Politics by Kay Whitlock and Michael Bronski as a book I would like to read through Librarything’s Early Reviewers program. I received it a few months ago and just started reading it in May. I knew virtually
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nothing about the book or it’s authors other than the description for Early Reviewers.

Well written with a logical progression and quick pace, Considering Hate begins by looking at the ways we dehumanize one another, and the effects of violence. This leads to the cumulative impact on society, and the conscience and subconscious beliefs we hold about those different from ourselves.

Boundaries and what the authors called the “psychic shadows of hate” was the location of my first real disagreement. They asked, “What people and what groups are liable to be hated? What are the historical and cultural conditions that surround this?” To me, this is the wrong question and a dangerous perspective that enables and stokes hatred and fear. In essence breaking the issue down into a bad psychobabble quiz out of People or Cosmo. “How likely are you to be hated? You be surprised by what the answer these ten questions could mean about you!”

My perspective is that if I discover hatred in the world, I must look and see if that same hatred exists in my heart. Rarely is naked hatred found, as it is often well dressed in the tailored look of fear, ignorance, or my favorite - misunderstanding. Regardless, once found change is my responsibility, first in me, and then in the world around me. Though the path to hatred may be understandable, a person or group may have carried out some injustice against me or those I love causing injury and pain, hatred is nonetheless never acceptable. The statistics that may or may not make me more likely to be hated are irrelevant.

In one sense this difference of perspective is significant, it is not something that disrupts the journey of sharing and understanding ideas. Illustrating their point, the authors focused on the Cordoba House, an Islamic cultural center that was to be housed two blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. The dogma and dishonesty that followed did disrupt that journey.

“In December 2009, plans for an Islamic cultural center (first called Cordoba House, now known as Park 51) to be built two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, were announced. The center was to contain a mosque. Early media response was positive to neutral, but national controversy erupted after anti-Islamic bloggers organized a campaign opposing the center. Inaccurately branding the project the “Ground Zero mosque,” they claimed it would be a victory monument for the perpetrators of 9/11. The Anti-Defamation League and politicians such as Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and Ed Koch came out in opposition to it.” Of course, this was followed by the mandatory and ubiquitous garnish of a Fox News reference.

Now I would like to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, as I’m sure the vastness of vitriol spewed by Bill O’Reilly and a host of bloggers made it easy to miss the work of more reasoned minds, but it doesn’t appear they looked.

It took only one Google search to find the New York Times article of December 9, 2009.
New York Times: Muslim Prayers and Renewal Near Ground Zero by Ralph Blumenthal and Sharaf Mowjood; December 8, 2009

The first three paragraphs of the article recount the events of 9/11, culminating in the landing gear of one of the planes crashing through the roof and two floors of the Burlington Coat Factory that previous occupied the Cordoba House, then the Times piece turns its attention to the “prayer space” that is used in secret by the building’s new occupants.

“The building has no sign that hints at its use as a Muslim prayer space, but these modest beginnings point to a far grander vision: an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors.
The location was precisely a key selling point for the group of Muslims who bought the building in July. A presence so close to the World Trade Center, “where a piece of the wreckage fell,” said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric leading the project, “sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.””

There were plenty of other articles echoing the sentiments of the NYT piece, and from folks far enough to the political left that were you to stand where they stood, the right wing would barely be a blip on the horizon. On August 17, 2010, Reuters reported that none other than New York Governor David Patterson was meeting with developers about moving the mosque further away from the 9/11 site.

Hatred cannot be stopped without understanding and acceptance. This is much easier said than done. “Oh Frank, you’ll get over it!” was my Granny’s response to my PaPaw’s complaining in the early 1980’s about having to take his shoes off to eat dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant. “Hell, I ain’t over Pearl Harbor yet!”, He bellowed across the restaurant. There will always be people like my grandfather clinging to anger, real or imagined, decades past whatever event inspired it.

Unfortunately, we humans rarely change without a catalyst, but a very small change can have unbelievable power. “No.” - Rosa Parks

Sadly, Considering Hate forfeits opportunities to create understanding and considers little more than the already considered.
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LibraryThing member pwagner2
This is a very hard review to write. It was a good book, but very dry at times. Sort of depressing too.
LibraryThing member LauraNicolePerry
I received the book and have read it. The book was very well written, but it didn't hold my interest very long. It is a perfect book for people who are interested the subject matter.
LibraryThing member krasiviye.slova
I really wanted to like this book. Violence and hatred are significant problems, and one that I am constantly trying to refine my ability to discuss with my high school students. This book was frustrating because it would begin to discuss a question, but never entered into any real depth. Now, that
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could be understood as simply part of its genre as an introductory text; however, I would have liked to have seen a more comprehensive bibliography. The very, very short list of recommended books didn't begin to list the materials that I know to be available on the subject.
In sum, this book could be a helpful starting to begin a conversation about violence, racism, and social justice, but it isn't a resource to extend that conversation beyond the most superficial of levels.
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LibraryThing member bookcrazed
Considering Hate is a meditation on restorative justice—that justice that “seeks to replace the adversarial nature of legal proceedings with a survivor-centered focus on the harm that has been done,” that allows “those who do harm [to] acknowledge the full impact of their actions, and agree
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to make amends or repair the harm to the extent possible.” In other words, restorative justice is about abandoning vengeance as the model for healing the wounds of those who are wronged.

Hatred is a consequence not a cause, they assert. More than half the text is devoted to expanding on that simple, but surprisingly novel idea. The authors explore the nature of hate and haters and how politicians and others in powerful positions exploit fear to gain and hold on to power—and how that fear cripples justice. The implication is that human nature is itself a collaborator in the unfairness that permeates our society: “People have always more easily motivated themselves and others through fear than through positive visions of change,” they write. Their history and analysis of hatred includes a careful and illuminating examination of a changing American culture and how it has been expressed in film and influenced by shifts in political power.

Whitlock and Bronski make several points that inspire me to revise my thinking. For one, they have reframed for me the meaning of “public lands.” I have othered “the government”—separated myself from it—for so long that I have forgotten the obvious: public lands belong to the people—to me and my family and my friends and all those people who shop at my grocery store and everyone who sends their children to the school near my house.

This point is intimately related to another very important one, that “privatizing public holdings and services” stifle the collective rights of ordinary citizens—you, me, us! Would I be so complacent if they were to seize my front yard? I’m not referring to eminent domain, where my land is put to use for the good of my wider community; I’m talking about selling my land to someone who has greater financial resources than I have so that they can profit from it. (The notion that the benefit will eventually “trickle down” to me has lost its shine; even those who use the argument have become aware of its transition from a not-too-well-thought-out welfare strategy to a sly power ploy.)

As an example, the authors relate the case of Pinochet’s 1973 seizure of control of Chile’s government from legally elected socialist Allende. Supported by a US government fearful of a trend toward nationalizing natural-resource extraction industries (such as mining and oil), Pinochet authorized a group of young Chileans who had studied free-market economics at the University of Chicago to design and implement a new economic policy for Chile. The end result, write Whitlock and Bronsky, was “dismantling labor unions, reducing wages, making draconian cuts in public employment, and privatizing public holdings and services.” And, “the result was a highly effective engine of upward redistribution, transferring public resources to private hands and encouraging the accumulation of wealth by a few at the expense of others.

In this era when the redistribution of wealth is a major political issue, this term—upward redistribution—called my attention to the very important fact that redistribution is not just about taking from the rich and giving to the poor. There exists a mirror image. Seizing public assets with the supposition that people who already have more are better equipped to use it properly is simply taking from the poor and giving to the rich. It’s not a new notion, but rather somewhat reminiscent of the model of European colonization. During the nineteenth century, in search of more land for crops and pastureland to feed Western civilization, European colonists seized real estate in distant lands, where they systematically murdered the people they found living there and using it in common freehold. One such British “farmer” was reported to have said that exterminating the locals was a shame, but necessary since they didn’t know how to put their land to good use and interfered with those who did.

The solutions the authors propose suggest a balance that can be accomplished through mob accountability, or collective responsibility, as Whitlock and Bronsky term it—no small task in a litigious American culture, where admitting error or wrongdoing results in swift action to correct your sin by legalistic economic ruin.

Philosopher Hannah Arendt, they point out, wrote that our common humanity “has the very serious consequence that in one form or another men must assume responsibility for all crimes committed by men and that all nations share in the onus of evil committed by all others.”

“Responsibility must be separated from punishment,” these authors write. “To do so opens new understandings of collective moral engagement and agency rooted in an ethic of interdependence rather than of retribution. . . . Rather than emphasizing guilt and blame, public focus might usefully shift to such concepts as societal accountability, healing, and redress.”

Considering Hate is an important contribution to the body of literature that calls us to examine our thinking about violence and vengeance as a path to a better society—the notion that a bigger war is the remedy for war—and to consider the common-sense approach of abandoning revenge as a viable tactic in addressing injustice, poverty, and all the other ills of human society.
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Awards

Lambda Literary Award (Finalist — 2016)

Language

Physical description

184 p.; 5.76 inches

ISBN

080709191X / 9780807091913

Local notes

violence/crime
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