Never tolerate dehumanization ~ Brené Brown

Human beings find it hard to practice violence against other human beings. Some people in power play on our fears and turn us against each other, deliberately dehumanizing people to justify hurting them: from Matthew Shephard (beaten to death in 1998 for being a gay man) to the 49 Latinx people who died in 2016 at Pulse nightclub; from Indigenous people viewed as “savages” to internment of Japanese Canadian citizens in World War II to the six million Jewish people who died in the Holocaust; from ongoing anti-Muslim violence to #blacklivesmatter protests against racist violence.

“We must never tolerate dehumanization — the primary instrument of violence that has been used in every genocide recorded throughout history.” Brené Brown

It is impossible to have authentic connection within and with others when we are afraid of being hurt and when we are in a survival mode of fight, flight, or freeze. Ideally individuals feel accepted as part of their birth or chosen family and community. This helps to mitigate the damaging effects of internalized self-hatred and dehumanizing from the culture at large.

Is your whole family part of a dehumanized group or is it you individually as different from your family? A person who is LGBTQ2S+ may feel like an outsider in their biological family. Dehumanizing based on race is shared by a…