“What Are We Going to Do About the Hate?” begins with a question that refuses to let the listener remain a passive observer. It does not ask whether hatred exists or whether it is causing harm. Those realities are already visible. The urgent question is what each of us—and society as a whole—is prepared to do about it.
The song examines the forces that allow hatred to grow: racial prejudice, violence, fear, distorted media messages, political manipulation, and the indifference that develops when suffering becomes familiar. These forces do not operate in isolation. They reinforce one another, shaping attitudes and behaviors until division begins to feel normal and destruction appears inevitable.
By returning repeatedly to its central question, the song places responsibility directly before the listener. Concern alone is not enough. Recognizing injustice without confronting it allows the cycle to continue. The question therefore becomes a demand for consciousness: examine what we absorb, what we repeat, what we tolerate, and how our choices may either challenge hatred or help preserve it.
Gary wrote the song from a conviction that hatred must be confronted before it becomes an accepted and irreversible force. Today, he feels its message is even more relevant and urgent. Powerful interests increasingly profit from keeping people angry, fearful, and divided, turning human conflict into influence, attention, and gain. The song asks listeners to recognize those forces—and to resist being used by them.
Yet the song is not simply an accusation. It is also a call for solutions. Its urgency comes from the belief that another outcome is still possible, but only if people awaken to the consequences of continued inaction. Hatred threatens more than individual relationships or isolated communities. Left unanswered, it can erode the moral foundation of society and place our shared future, even our continued existence, in jeopardy.
The absence of an easy resolution is deliberate. No single person or lyric can supply the entire answer. Instead, the song asks every listener to become part of that answer through awareness, moral courage, civic responsibility, and collective action.
“What Are We Going to Do About the Hate?” is therefore both a warning and an invitation. It challenges us to raise our consciousness, reject the forces that profit from division, and begin the difficult work of replacing hatred with justice, understanding, and a more humane way of living together—before the damage becomes irreversible.