Hate crimes, anti-feminism, racism and even genocide can take place anywhere and possibly these things happen everyday. There is a conceptual way of explaining these occurrences. This is called reification. Reification can affect anyone and sometimes it may affect everyone. This theory or concept can help us understand why issues of racism, anti-feminism, hate crimes and genocide even take place. .
In order to understand that reification may be the cause of horrible atrocities towards mankind, we must first know exactly what reification is. Reification is the act of treating an abstract relationship as though it were a concrete entity. In Dr. Weisband's lecture he refers to this as to "thingify" because the word "rei" is Latin for thing. To thingify, we are taking an inanimate object or concept such as race or gender and putting a label or stereotype on it and attempting to make it concrete. Many scholars believe that reification is the cause of all racism or the "root of all evil." First, in order to show contempt for others, one must feel contempt and disgust for themselves and in turn, to make themselves feel better they focus the contempt and disgust they have on someone else, most likely another race, gender or religion. Another thing we must understand is that reification starts with the self. One must have a positive view of themselves in order to stop reification from happening. Once one begins to gain a negative view of their "self" then they start looking for ways to gain this positive outlook back. In most cases, because of human nature, one feels that it is necessary to start looking downward or blaming someone else for their misfortune or low self image. Reification may also be caused by jealousy and envy. Thus, reification provides a false sense of security. Once a person feels insecure about themselves than he or she tries to make them feel better by attacking someone else.