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Question
Answer the following in about 100-120 words:
'No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background or his religion'. Do you agree? Elaborate on the basis of the chapter "Nelson Mandela - Long walk to freedom".
Solution
Through his fight for freedom, Nelson Mandela demonstrated how hatred was more of a social construct than a basic human trait. He talks about how he observed racism among white people, which was fostered socially rather than naturally. He recalls that despite the prisons' extreme brutality, there was a sliver of hope for peace in the eyes of a few guards, whose eyes reflected a flicker of humanity. He came to understand that removing someone else's freedom places the oppressor in a cage of prejudice because hatred is harder on the human heart than love. According to Mandela, hatred is a learned, not innate, trait. But since love comes more naturally to the human heart, if one could learn to hate, they could also be taught to love. No one is therefore born with the intent to spread hatred, but they may do so by way of indirect adaptation to a world that appears to have gone astray.
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