Still drawing from Schreiter’s book on Reconciliation, here are seven ways of looking at folks that prevent reconciliation and ubuntu.

1. Demonizing. The other guy is powerful and dangerous, and he should be eliminated ASAP.

2. Romanticizing. The other guy is “god’s special little angel,” much better than you and I, and probably born that way.

3. Colonizing. The other guy ain’t quite right and could use our help, especially if it calls for “tough love.”

4. Generalizing. The other guy just disappears, whether by a death squad or a sociology department.

5. Trivializing. The other guy is just like you and me. Can’t we all just get along?

6. Homogenizing. The other guy is just like all the others, you know, like “those people.”

7. Vaporizing. What other guy? There’s no other guy!

Up next: The three characteristics of the spirituality of reconciliation.