Rights and Wrongs in America: Building Tolerance

"You've got to be taught to hate and fear" went the lyric from Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. Intolerance is an attitude/behavior which is either learned from family/peers or is a reaction to stressful situations such as unemployment, poverty, and shifting values. Building Tolerance examines the causes of intolerance and suggests how tolerance can be built in communities. In Los Angeles, former gang members, immigrant rights advocates, and the director of a new "Museum of Tolerance" speak out on the subject of prejudice. In Boston, Daryll Williams, a young man who was shot and paralyzed during school integration turmoil twenty years ago now devotes his life speaking to multiracial groups promoting peace and harmony. Finally, Cornel West, author, Christian, and "radical democrat" discusses racism, citing as contributing factors underemployment, a low quality of life for the nation's children, and a corrosive cynicism in America today that demeans public life and discourse. The video is a welcome and well intentioned look at a serious problem, but it's finally too brief and superficial to shed much light on the subject. The other titles in the series are Combating Childhood Poverty and Creating Peace. Not an essential purchase for most collections. (S. Rees)