Labels and Hate

It is easy to hate an idea or a label, it is easy to pass judgement. It is harder to hate a person. Regardless of your politics, the image of the young boy with the head wound, looking completely shell-shocked, is an image of someone that people can not hate. The human inside each of us wants to help, take the pain away, and give comfort.

As soon as the focus is changed from a young boy to a “Syrian refugee boy” or “Muslim refugee boy,” the tone changes for some people. When labels are applied and used instead of the person’s name, it becomes easy to hate or not identify with the human underneath the label. When the label Muslim is applied without regard to the human subject, it is easy to hate, easy to dismiss, easy to discriminate, it defines the line between my-group and not-my-group. Application of a label only masks the person, the human, behind it. If you think this is not the case, replace Muslim with Roman Catholic--those Roman Catholic refugees need to be vetted, they are terrorists and are coming into this country undocumented. If that statement makes you mad, ask yourself why. Is it because you know Roman Catholics are good people? Is it because Roman Catholic is your particular faith and you can see discrimination in that statement? Add your label, find your particular trigger spot. Buddhists, Jews, Zionists, Mormons, Atheists, Wiccans, Christians, Agnostics, Pagans, Marxists, Communists, Capitalists, what label you apply changes how a particular statement affects others.

Labels, beliefs, and ideas have power to take the focus away from reality and shape the minds of the population in unrealistic ways. It is amazing to me how fast people will deny that their particular belief system has any harmful effects on others. How quickly would any Christian condemn another religion or its followers if there were allegations of sexual child abuse within the religion by the religious leaders? The power of the Christian label in the US allows its adherents, and those who are indifferent, to sway a population into ignoring the reality while imposing discrimination against non-believers.