Why I have coffee with people who send me hate mail | Özlem Cekic

Özlem Cekic's email inbox has been full of hate mail since 2007, when she won a seat in the Danish Parliament — becoming the first female Muslim to do so. At first she just deleted the emails, dismissing them as the work of fanatics, until one day a friend made an unexpected suggestion: to reach out to the hate mail writers and invite them to meet for coffee. Hundreds of "dialogue coffee" meetings later, Cekic shares how face-to-face conversation can be one of the most powerful forces to disarm hate — and challenges us all to engage with people we disagree with.

Check out more TED Talks:

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more.

Follow TED on Twitter:
Like TED on Facebook:

Subscribe to our channel:

42 Comments on Why I have coffee with people who send me hate mail | Özlem Cekic

    • Green Thunder ask the black Africans before them how they couldn’t walk down the street without carrying a identification card during Apartheid.

    • the definition of the word itself or the specific hatred in some people that turns to violence? because the definition and the roots of how it occurs are understandable from a knowledge perspective. its easy to understand why and how racism exists and continues today but it’s hard to understand racists on a personal level.

    • Certain races seem to lack or surpass in certain abilities. This observation, causes beliefs founded by moments they experienced.

      But those races when put in our conditions can cope like us. A smart individual thinker would understand maybe his ‘racism’ idea is flawed, as the black man was taught and learned like any of us.

      Slowly, the idea died until culture changed. Except for a few who still believe the idea in some frame.

    • Ignorance leads to bigotry.
      People don’t understand the huge cross-cultural boundaries and how they play a role in miscommunication and conflict.
      Tribalism – people like those who are like themselves, and tend not to like outsiders. The more tight knit and isolationist someone’s tribe is (race, religion, sub-culture, home town, even sports team), the more they dislike outsiders.
      Lastly, sometimes people are just monkeys in shoes.

  1. My closest friend and I are polar opposites and we have directly contradicting views on most things, but we legit just agree to disagree and don’t meditate on our differences. “You do you,” she always says.

  2. as far as the immature hippies thing goes, i don’t think all of the Sanders voters were, but i did know one who was, so with every stereotype, they exist for a reason, meaning there has to be one member of a stereotyped group that fits, statistically speaking. if not, then where did any stereotype about any persons come from?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*


Shares
Share This