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CHAPTER VI
Prejudice Must Go
Harmony and fellowship between peoples and nations is a necessary foundation for universal peace and world federation. So important, in fact, is this factor of f I‘lCZ‘.t_lSlllp that Bahá’u’lláh in all preachments concerning the New World Order insisted on the elimination of prejudices of all kinds—whether religious, racial, patriotic or political.
“All warfare and bloodshed in human history have been the outcome of prejudice,” declared ‘Abdu’lBahft in 1912, in an address on the World Faith of Bahá’u’lláh to the Bahá’u’lláh Metaphysical Club of Boston. “This earth is one home and one nativity. God has created mankind with equal endowment and right to live upon the earth. Racial prejudice or separation into nations proceeds from human motives or ignorance. Why should we be separated by artificial and imaginary boundaries? This is one globe, one land, one country.”
Wherever the Bahai World Faith spreads, it harmonizes and unites its adherents. There is no consciousness or distinction of race or color. Actually there is being formed here the beginnings of a new race; which is the human race, freed from all those divisions that have accumulated through thousands of years of trial and error upon this sad old earth.
We might look back to see why and how these divisions have grown up. But it is better to look forward to the glad day when these unnecessary and destructively hampering separations and antagonisms no longer exist. Such is the hopeful vision which stimulates the epochal activities of Bahá’ís, the world over.
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The roots of prejudice are deep seated in man’s biological and emotional nature. Primitive man shares with the animals an instinctive aversion to everything different and foreign. Civilization has broadened the horizons of men’s mirfds and consciousness and has gradually brought all areas of the world into contact, so that foreignness “per se” is almost a thing of the past.
But civilization by merely secular means has not proved itself capable of eliminating prejudice. As one source of prejudice dies down another source may spring up as the interests and desires of various groups come into apparent conflict with one another. Indeed, the alarming fact is apparent that virulent prejudice can be very rapidly spread by indoctrination, as under Nazi-ism and Communism.
Yet if humanity is to attain to organizational unity, to that “One World” which we are beginning to envision as not only a desirable but an inevitable goal if humanity is to survive, then somehow prejudice must be disposed of.
On the credit side we have the laudable achievement of the United Nations in evolving, for the first time in history, a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This in itself proves the awakened consciousness of the world on the question of prejudice, Morally and legally fifty-eight countries of the world have adopted, after several years work, a basic statement of the justice and protection under national and international law which are the inalienable right of every human being on earth. The first part of Article 2 of this Bill of Rights hits immediately at prejudice. “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”
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44 Tomorrow and Tomorrow
All of the fifty-eight nations have pledged themselves to support and carry out the articles of this Declaration. There are innumerable difficulties yet to be overcome; and how far, in the final analysis, such protection of human rights could be enforced is a moot question indeed. Earnest endeavors are being made, and will continue to be made, to activate these human rights. But there are the ever-present “intangibles” of social customs in each country which no other power outside of that country could possible interfere with; and there are, as between masses of peoples, the ever-dangerous currents of nationalism.
Since prejudice is a negative quality, a weed flourishing in sour soils, what is needed is a positive and constructive treatment. Those things which conduce to unity will of themselves drive out prejudice. A fuller understanding of the economic and cultural interrelationship and interdependence of various nations and areas of the world will help to stimulate the awareness of the need of world unity. In this field we see not only an increase in eflfort, but an increase in results.
The natural field for developing a wholesome emotional attitude is in youth. Adults have to be reconverted, reconditioned. It is a slow and difficult process. But youth can more easily be educated into new channels of perception and emotional reaction. And the earlier such education begins the more stable and advantageous the results.
Consequently Bahá’ís lay great importance upon the training of their children in the broad and universal doctrine of the oneness of humanity. Bahá’u’lláh declared the first requisite to world unity and world
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Prejudice Must Go 45
federation to be this new consciousness of oneness. The study of mathematics and sciences and languages rate, in Bahá’í consideration, as secondary in importance to this great humanized area of oneness.
Hitler indoctrinated hate. The Bahá’ís indoctrinate a vitalizing love for all humanity. Mere absence of prejudice will not suffice. What is needed is the presence of an ardent constructive force such as only love can contribute. The opposite of hatred is not the absence of this quality, but the activating presence of love. Nothing else will suffice.
Bahá’u’lláh’s utterance to Professor Browne in 1890 brings this to sharp focus:——“Close your eyes to racial differences and welcome all with the light of oneness. We desire but the good of the world and the happiness of nations; that all nations should become one in faith and all men be as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and dilferences of race annulled. . . . Is not this that which Christ foretold?”
Bonds of affection and unity are not established by governments or legislative agencies of any kind. Even cultural reciprocity—while it nurtures enlightenment and dispels that fog of ignorance which has been stated to be the densest of all matter—does not engender affection.
During his tour of the United States in 1912, ‘Abdu’|Baha in a certain lecture made the statement that “the disease which affects the body politic is absence of love and altruism. We declare that love is the cause of the existence of all phenomena and that the absence of love is the cause of disintegration or non-existence.
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And at another time he said, “Love is the highest law in this great universe of God. Love is the law of order between simple essences, whereby they are apportioned and united into compound substances in this world of matter. Love is the essential and magnetic power that organizes the planets and the stars which shine in infinite space. . . . Love is the highest honor for all the nations of men. . . .”
In thus tracing the power of this attraction, love, as the cohesive and creative force in the universe, it can more readily be understood what was meant by the statement that “the disease which affects the body politic is absence of love and altruism.” It is this cosmic power of love that Bahá’u’lláh enjoined in the words “that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and differences of race annulled.”
This is a power far beyond the lukewarm attitude of tolerance. This is the active ingredient to be injected into human consciousness once again in pristine fervor to annihilate the canker of prejudice.
. To take all the world to onc’s bosom is frequently accounted a ridiculous impossibility. So it is, measured solely by the equations of intimate personal terms that characterize our immediate relationships. An impersonal love is hard to define, harder still to grasp. But that quality of spirit that resents deep-seated inequities, exploitations and social cruelties as keenly as if perpetrated on one’s kin and that cannot remain apathetic about victims of prejudice,—this social attitude approaches the power of love as a universal force. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” carries a worldwide connotation today, so close have our relationships
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in a one-world family become. That is one reason why prejudice affects more deeply the body politic than even in bygone ages. We know we must achieve understanding or perish. Understanding is the preliminary step towards achieving those bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men, foundation of the welfare of nations.
Bahá’u’lláh constantly stressed the consciousness of oneness. “Let not a man glory in that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind.” It is this transcendent love that is the antidote for prejudice. And it is this standard of citizenship for a one-world society that must be striven for by each citizen.
This is not an affair within the realm of executive government. The conquest of prejudice is the job and responsibility of all of us. Diversity there will always be. For diversity is legitimate. It is a prime asset of human relationships; it gives the color, beauty and interest to all our cultural life; it provides the range of talent necessary to carry on the world’s work. To dislike people because they are “different” and do not conform to the pattern of our own social customs is ridiculous and tragic. Pressing upon us from every aspect of life today, enforcing our realization of its truth and the urgency of its application, is the simple sublimity of Bahá’u’lláh’s utterance eighty years ago “This handful of dust the earth is but one home; let it be in unity.”
