The Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the lynching of African Americans, the colonial slave trade: these are horrific episodes of mass violence spawned from racism and hatred. We like to think that we could never see such evils again--that we would stand up and fight. But something deep in the human psyche--deeper than prejudice itself--leads people to persecute the other: dehumanization, or the human propensity to think of others as less than human. An award-winning author and philosopher, Smith takes an unflinching look at the mechanisms of the mind that encourage us to see someone as less than human. There is something peculiar and horrifying in human psychology that makes us vulnerable to thinking of whole groups of people as subhuman creatures. When governments or other groups stand to gain by exploiting this innate propensity, and know just how to manipulate words and images to trigger it, there is no limit to the violence and hatred that can result. Drawing on numerous historical and contemporary cases and recent psychological research, On Inhumanity is the first accessible guide to the phenomenon of dehumanization. Smith walks readers through the psychology of dehumanization, revealing its underlying role in both notorious and lesser-known episodes of violence from history and current events. In particular, he considers the uncomfortable kinship between racism and dehumanization, where beliefs involving race are so often precursors to dehumanization and the horrors that flow from it. On Inhumanity is bracing and vital reading in a world lurching towards authoritarian political regimes, resurgent white nationalism, refugee crises that breed nativist hostility, and fast-spreading racist rhetoric. The book will open your eyes to the pervasive dangers of dehumanization and the prejudices that can too easily take root within us, and resist them before they spread into the wider world.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Deep South was organized around the idea that Whites deserved power, privilege, and resources, while anyone else was born to a life sentence of inferiority. This was the world in which I grew up. #2 My father was a different character entirely. He was born in Brazil, of missionary parents, and he struggled with his own racial prejudices all his life. When my father fell in love with a Black girl in his early teens, his parents sent him away to the ancestral home in South Carolina to sever their budding relationship. #3 Dehumanization is when we view others as less than human. It is extremely dangerous, and we must do everything we can to avoid it. But we must also understand what it is about us that makes dehumanization so easy for us. #4 Resisting dehumanization is a two-fold process. You must understand that you are capable of dehumanizing others, and have knowledge of what it is about the human mind that predisposes us to regard our fellow human beings as less than human.