Healing Our Nation programs use racism as a model to examine other forms of  institutionalized prejudices. As people come to understand racism, how it came to be and what can be done about it, they can more easily recognize and overcome other forms of prejudice and discrimination.

We believe that it is important to give people this in-depth understanding of at least one form of institutionalized prejudice rather than a quick overview of many. With the in-depth concentration on racism, participants get an educational experience that helps change their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward "the other" as well as their own racial group.

Understanding the power that is woven into institutionalized prejudice is crucial to healing it individually and institutionally.  Without cleansing our country of the prejudices that contaminate our institutions, we continue to infect new generations of U.S. citizens with stereotypes that create greater disunity, separation, and discrimination.   

• No human being is born prejudiced. All are born with the capacity for loving, cooperative, zestful relationships with all other human beings.
  
• To tolerate and participate in societal discrimination such as racism, people have to be conditioned to do so, either in the role of the perpetrator or the victim.
  
• The care of children shapes the lives and attitudes of our future adult citizens. Disempowerment of the young, miseducation, and segregation impact us all as they contaminate our thinking, and damage our self-concepts, diminish our abilities to appreciate one another and take action to help foster a more just society.
  

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