Summary of David Livingstone Smith's On Inhumanity

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Deep South was organized around the idea that Whites deserved power, privilege, and resources, while anyone else was born to a life sentence of inferiority. This was the world in which I grew up. #2 My father was a different character entirely. He was born in Brazil, of missionary parents, and he struggled with his own racial prejudices all his life. When my father fell in love with a Black girl in his early teens, his parents sent him away to the ancestral home in South Carolina to sever their budding relationship. #3 Dehumanization is when we view others as less than human. It is extremely dangerous, and we must do everything we can to avoid it. But we must also understand what it is about us that makes dehumanization so easy for us. #4 Resisting dehumanization is a two-fold process. You must understand that you are capable of dehumanizing others, and have knowledge of what it is about the human mind that predisposes us to regard our fellow human beings as less than human.