By  thinkMTV

1. ACT: Educate yourself about discrimination. There are countless ways to get involved. Check out some ways to promote tolerance in your life:

Ideas for Yourself
Ideas for Your Home
Ideas for Your School
Ideas for Your Workplace
Ideas for Your Community

2. SPEAK UP: Discriminatory actions and speech should be exposed and denounced. Speak up when you hear offensive jokes or slurs. Let people know that biased speech is never acceptable.
Using your voice, however, can be difficult and uncomfortable to do. Learn how to speak up no matter what situation you’re in.

Respond to a bigoted comment
10 ways to fight hate
101 Tools for tolerance
Respond to hate at school
Learn the Lingo

3. UNITE: Get involved with the existing groups in your community that promote diversity and fight discrimination. If these groups don’t exist, encourage those around you to form one. Don’t wait for someone else to take action. You and a few friends could be the catalyst for change.

4. BE A LEADER: Work with teachers, principals, politicians and community leaders. Working with the people in charge can be a great way to get more done. Discourage the use of discriminatory ideals and practices. Acknowledge and celebrate the diverse leaders in your community. Invite these leaders to speak to their communities about their experiences with discrimination. Urge and help leaders to promote tolerance, equality, and opportunity.

5. DIG DEEPER: Explore your own prejudices and stereotypes. Where do you fit in? Seek out books with diverse characters and themes. Reading can be a good way to learn about the lives of people whose experiences are much different than your own.

Just by becoming aware of the words we use, we can begin to change the way we think about each other and our differences. Consider the language we use and the power it has to affect the ways we organize our world and each other. The words we choose are often a subconscious way we communicate and perpetuate discrimination.

Learn how we diminish people’s importance by comparing them unequally, even when we don’t realize it. (PDF)By assuming things based on “norms,” we perpetuate stereotypes. (PDF) Observations often carry a positive or negative point of view, even if we think we are getting just the facts. This point of view can have a huge impact on what we think and repeat as truth. (PDF)

Source (copyright):  http://think.mtv.com/044FDFFFF0002D79C001A00989991/