Why We Hate Those People

That other group, whoever they are: people of another race, of another religion, another sex or political group. . .it is so easy to disparage them, even to hate them (especially if you read social media).

But we all know individuals of those groups who are good people. They are just people, most of whom want the same things as we do, and have the same types of struggles as we do.

But it’s when we view people as a group, then it becomes easy to hate them.

As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his autobiography:

As soon as one begins to think of the other side as a mass or a crowd, the human link seems to go. We forget that crowds also consist of individuals, of men and women and children, who love and hate and suffer. An average Englishman, if he were frank, would probably confess that he knows some quite decent Indians but they are exceptions and as a whole Indians are a detestable crowd. The average Indian would admit that some Englishmen who he knows are admirable, but apart from these few, the English are an overbearing, brutal and thoroughly bad lot. Curious how each person judges of the other race, not from the individual with whom he has come in contact, but from others about whom he knows very little or nothing at all.