Demonization

Let me just flag an interesting article by my colleague Nancy Wadsworth on the tendency of those on the left to demonize those on the right. Of course, this relationship is reciprocal, but Wadsworth is really trying to break down attempts by liberals to paint all conservatives as stupid evangelical white bigots. She's spent too much time following racial reconciliation movements to believe these broad stereotypes:

I have also sat in countless churches, conferences, and living rooms and watched white Christians and their counterparts of color dig deep into their faith and deeper into their consciences to find a way to reach across the gulf that racism and resultant segregation has created in American Christian communities. It's often awkward, it's never perfect, and it sometimes involves faith-based rituals like footwashing that make outsiders squeamish. But it's real, it's emotionally genuine, and it's one of the few paths to social change in matters of race in socially conservative communities that is, in fact, ideologically coherent, if you actually believe the Bible. Compared to the "diversity forums" and "difference" encounters I've participated in through academic and political settings, which, after all these years, still often manage to degenerate into the Oppression Olympics, evangelical racial change efforts are refreshingly vulnerable.... I'd love to see my secular lefty allies exert that kind of effort in facing their own ghouls.

She adds that university faculties, newsrooms, etc. -- citadels of the left -- aren't exactly models of diversity today.

Definitely worth the read.