Teaching Acceptance

I think very few people would disagree with the idea of teaching acceptance; it is, at least ostensibly, considered a facet of our culture's mores. There is a problem with assuming that acceptance alone could solve the problem of discrimination. Unqualified acceptance doesn’t claim to remedy the problem of discrimination at all; it almost presupposes it. Instead, the roots of discrimination must be addressed. We cannot attempt to deal with the issue of discrimination without first acknowledging that a language of power exists in our culture and then recognizing the way it contributes to the stratification of people groups within our society.