There are two entry ways to the Museum of Tolerance here in Los Angeles.  One of the doors is labeled “prejudice” and the other “unprejudiced.” How chagrined is the museum-goer who attempts to walk through the “unprejudiced” door.  It is firmly locked.  We are all guilty. 

If you cannot visit the spectacular Museum of Tolerance, you can visit the Tolerance.org web site to find all of the resources you're ever likely to need to deepen your understanding of the prejudices we all carry with us about those who are not from the same race, religion, nation, political party, or socio-economic class as are we.

To give you a very small taste of what tolerance.org has to offer, I provide twenty of the 101 "Tools for Tolerance" on the site.  There are hundreds of other resources.  Feel free to browse them and provide them to others who share your concern that a lack of tolerance for other peoples and cultures will be the undoing of us all.

101 Tools for Tolerance

Here are twenty aimed at helping ourselves to be more tolerant.

1. Attend a play, listen to music or go to a dance performance by artists whose race or ethnicity is different from your own. 
2. Volunteer at a local social services organization. 
3. Attend services at a variety of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples to learn about different faiths. 
4. Visit a local senior citizens center and collect oral histories. Donate large-print reading materials and books on tape. Offer to help with a craft project. 
5. Shop at ethnic grocery stores and specialty markets. Get to know the owners. Ask about their family histories. 
6. Participate in a diversity program. 
7. Ask a person of another cultural heritage to teach you how to perform a traditional dance or cook a traditional meal. 
8. Learn sign language. 
9. Take a conversation course in another language that is spoken in your community. 
10. Teach an adult to read. 
11. Speak up when you hear slurs. Let people know that bias speech is always unacceptable. 
12. Imagine what your life might be like if you were a person of another race, gender or sexual orientation. How might "today" have been different? 
13. Take the How Tolerant are You? A Test of Hidden Bias. Enlist some friends to take this "hidden bias" test with you and discuss the results. 
14. Take a Civil Rights history vacation. Tour key sites and museums. 
15. Research your family history. Share information about your heritage in talks with others. 
16.  List all the stereotypes you can — positive and negative — about a particular group. Are these stereotypes reflected in your actions? 
17. Think about how you appear to others. List personality traits that are compatible with tolerance (e.g., compassion, curiosity, openness). List those that seem incompatible with tolerance (e.g., jealousy, bossiness, perfectionism). 
18. Create a "diversity profile" of your friends, co-workers and acquaintances. Set the goal of expanding it by next year. 
19. Sign the Declaration of Tolerance and return it to: the National Campaign for Tolerance
    400 Washington Avenue Montgomery, AL 36104 
20. Read a book or watch a movie about another culture.