A black security guard at a high school in Wisconsin's capital was fired for telling a student to stop calling him the N-word, the result of a policy aimed ironically enough at demonstrating zero tolerance for racial slurs. That mistake has now been corrected. Common sense prevailed and the security guard got his job back. There are probably many lessons to be drawn from the episode, but one is that anger, division, fear, hate and the violence they so often produce are complicated and have elaborate, tangled root systems. They can't be legislated away with zero-tolerance policies. Trying to make them disappear by banning them is doomed to fail but can have the kind of disturbing unintended consequences seen in this case. The mistake that was made initially in this instance is a mistake we are all prone to make because we all are naturally inclined to focus on what's in plain sight rather than what is hidden beneath the surface. Digging down to those tangled root systems requires conscious effort that is not often our first instinct.

The same day Madison West High School security guard Marlon Anderson was reinstated to his position, We Are Many-United Against Hate founder Masood Akhtar and executive director Mike McCabe were on Wisconsin Public Radio's "Central Time" program talking about underlying causes of hate and violence and what can be done about them, trying to start a conversation about the disease and not the symptoms. If you missed it when it aired live, you can listen to the entire half-hour discussion whenever you have spare time. Masood and Mike also wrote a newspaper commentary about the 12-step program We Are Many-United Against Hate has put forward that was published by news outlets including The Capital Times, Janesville Gazette and WisPolitics.com.

Now it's your turn. Please do your part to support this conscious effort to deepen our society's examination of and response to growing hate and violence in our society. Spread the word. Share this with others you know. Extend the conversation. And help us do more of what we are doing.

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