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November 22nd, 2008

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Education is key in combating racial hatred
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August 15th, 2007 issue

Extremist views and minority stereotypes are insidious. That’s partly because such views often don’t seem to be worth challenging.

But, when even a small number of people who espouse racial and other types of hatred go unchallenged, they can cause problems.

That’s why we’re glad to see the monitoring project undertaken by the Czech Helsinki Committee, a human rights group (See story, page A2). Hatred and ignorance spread on the Internet can erupt in ugly ways, like the perennial skirmishes at May Day rallies, beatings of innocent people by skinheads and the violence by soccer hooligans at games, especially those involving teams with minority players. Sparta Praha is the latest club to step up security for next week’s qualifying match against Arsenal to prevent fans’ possible racist behavior. Sparta was forced to pay a 32,000 euro ($44,000/901,760 Kč) fine and was later forced to play with one-third of its stadium closed as punishment for a 2005 match in which fans hurled racist insults.

It’s illegal here to intimidate any person or group or incite violence against them based on their nationality, language, race, religion or class. Anyone found guilty of such hate crimes can be sentenced up to two years in jail.

But there are shadings to this type of behavior, and you don’t have to wear an armband with a swastika to promote dangerous racist ideas. Many of the people involved with the Web sites being monitored by the Helsinki Committee know what the boundaries are, and are careful to stop just short of them, or use references or terms with connotations that may be unfamiliar to outsiders. “Minorities,” for example, is a common word used on such sites to refer to Roma, or Gypsies. Wrapping racist ideas in the trappings of patriotism or nationalism is another common dodge.

In April, European Union officials approved a set of hate speech rules for all member countries. They still need to be vetted by each nation’s government, which may have legitimate concerns about their impact. The principal reason it took six years to draft a common set of laws is because of various countries’ concerns over how they would impact existing guarantees of freedom of expression, which are well-founded.

What’s the answer? As a newspaper, we are particularly sensitive to, and supportive of, freedom of speech. But it need not be curtailed if, along with effective enforcement, an effort is made to educate the young.

Generally speaking, education is an effective counter to bigotry. If students are taught basic lessons of history and human rights in school, they are a lot less likely to be swayed by racist propaganda on the Internet or anywhere else.

In Czech schools, children learn history and the lessons of anti-Semitism. But some rights groups worry that the lessons are dry, and teachers are afraid of generating controversy. This is a critical point: Children won’t understand the roots and manifestations of racism if parents and schools don’t stress how important those lessons are.

The fact that there are laws in place to punish hate crimes is a good start.

But we suggest schools formulate more detailed and comprehensive lesson plans for every age group. The more people learn to think for themselves and have a broad understanding of the world, the less interested they are in extremist views.

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