Notwithstanding the efforts already expended for its elimination, racism continues to work its evil upon this nation.
Progress toward tolerance, mutual respect, and unity has been painfully slow and marked with repeated setbacks. The recent resurgence of divisive racial attitudes, the increased number of racial incidents, and the deepening despair of minorities and the poor make the need for solutions ever more pressing and urgent. To ignore the problem is to expose the country to physical, moral and spiritual danger.
The oneness of humanity is a spiritual truth abundantly confirmed by science. Recognition of this truth compels the abandonment of all prejudices of race, color, creed, nation, and class–of “everything which enables people to consider themselves superior to others.” The principle of the oneness of humankind “is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope…. It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal…. It implies and organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced.”