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Religion, Practice and Science of Non-Violence
utilized carefully and judiciously.
Legislation against discriminative tendencies, if enforced, may be a sharp tool in the battle against discrimination. So too may court decisions that invalidate discriminatory legislation left over from the past. Legal action, however, has only an indirect bearing upon the reduction of personal prejudice. It cannot coerce thoughts or instil subjective tolerance. It says, in effect, "Your attitudes and prejudices are yours alone, but you may not act them out to a point where they endanger the lives, livelihood, or peace of mind, of individuals or groups living near you.” Law is intended only to control the outward expression of intolerance. And for this reason, legislative action is one of the major methods of reducing not only public discrimination, but private prejudice as well.
But legislative remedies are only one of several possible channels for improving ethnic relations and changing prejudiced attitudes.
Discussion of individual aggressiveness and the factors that lead to it, as well as of the group aggressiveness and the different prejudices that predispose towards it, and the measures suggested to control them, embolden us to say that if proper steps are taken, violence and aggression in a group or society can be lessened.
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