WEST INDIAN AUTHOR
URGES THE WORLD TO ABANDON TOLERANCE
PHOENIX, AZ — “Tolerance is no Virtue” is the new book from Montserrat native, Shirley Osborne. It investigates the means by which hatred and intolerance have come to seem both normal and reasonable in our world. Ms Osborne is dissatisfied with our modern practice of merely tolerating diverse people. “Tolerance is mediocre and cowardly,” she writes. “It is a definite improvement on crusades and death camps and gulags and lynch mobs and slave ships and witch-hunts and such. Yes. But, it is simply not good enough. It is beneath us, and it keeps us ignorant.” Subtitled, “Ignorance, Appreciation, and the Human Story” the book examines our common history of bigotry, and invites readers to rise above ignorance and fear by actively exploring and enjoying the wonders of our human miscellany.
“Differences are to be celebrated,” Osborne believes. “Our diversity is the primary reason the human race still survives. Difference of form, purpose, outlook, practice, is what drives human development. Similarities draw us together, and differences move us forward. Too often, we focus on similarities, while we ignore, resist, or try to erase other people’s differences, and consequently, inevitably, we end up in conflict, at war, often hating even our neighbors.”
Osborne has written about politics and social issues for many years. She has served on the Education Committee of the Anti-Defamation League’s Arizona branch, and with the organization’s A World of Difference Institute. She has facilitated discussions for S.H.I.N.E. (Seeking Harmony In Neighborhoods Everywhere) and for MTV’s “Open Your Mind”.
“Shirley Osborne is writing about one of the most urgent issues of our time,” say her publicists, “and she writes with a passion and a command of language that are infectious and powerful. This book offers strategies that can be utilised by individuals and groups to increase the peace throughout the world.”
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