Before dehumanizing a population, we set them apart as a “race.” That is, a variety of people who are fundamentally different from “us.” The folk notion of race is very much an artificial construction.
Dehumanization isn’t a way of talking. It’s a way of thinking – a way of thinking that, sadly, comes all too easily to us. Dehumanization is a scourge, and has been so for millennia. It acts as a psychological lubricant, dissolving our inhibitions and inflaming our destructive passions. As such, it empowers us to perform acts that would, under other circumstances, be unthinkable.
Rather than looking for explanations for why all people deserve to be treated with compassion and respect, we ought to be working at creating a world in which people are treated with compassion and respect. Human rights aren’t lying around waiting to be discovered. They’re made, not found.
Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts. – Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand.
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
The impressive record of atrocities racked up by the human race does not suggest that our conduct is guided by sympathy for others.
For dehumanization to occur the target group must first be essentialized. They, the others, must be seen as a distinct kind of person: not just superficially different, but radically so. This pattern is borne out by all of the cases of dehumanization that have been surveyed so far in this book.