A path to understanding and reconciliation?

A Harvard neuroimaging study of prejudice has singled out regions which appear to be used in gauging similarity and difference, contributing to the mechanism for discerning social in-groups and out-groups.

The researchers found that the ventral mPFC region was, indeed, more engaged when subjects considered the target person like them, and the dorsal mPFC region was more engaged while considering the target unlike them.
The researchers also gave the subjects a set of questions designed to reveal how similar to or different from the target people the students considered themselves. The researchers found that the more similar the subjects considered themselves to either target, the greater the response in the ventral mPFC. Conversely, the more dissimilar they considered themselves from the target person, the greater the activity in the dorsal mPFC...
"Without a self-referential basis for mentalizing about outgroup members, perceivers may rely heavily on precomputed judgments--such as stereotypes--to make mental state inferences about very dissimilar others.
"This view suggests that a critical strategy for reducing prejudice may be to breach the arbitrary boundaries based on social group membership by focusing instead on the shared similarity between oneself and outgroup members," concluded Mitchell and his colleagues.

Note that an inability to comprehend the cognition of the other person lends itself to the fallback use of prejudice. Extending this, then prejudice may also be overcome by improving the ability to model how the other person thinks, thus enabling self-referential cognition.

This model seems to fit that of the experience of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. From a article on the book Overcoming Apartheid:

Whether or not the TRC succeeded in its mission has been an issue of intense debate, but Gibson is the first to provide rigorous scientific evidence documenting precisely how the truth and reconciliation process made critical contributions to the nation's healing process. For example, responses to his survey provide compelling testimony that the TRC succeeded in getting its version of the truth about the country's apartheid past accepted by all types of South Africans.
"The most important lesson promulgated by the TRC is that both sides in the struggle over apartheid did horrible things," claims Gibson. "If one accepts shared blamed, one might come to see the struggle over apartheid as one of "pretty good" good against "pretty bad" bad, not as absolute good versus infinite evil. Because all sides did horrible things during the struggle, all sides were compromised to some degree. It then becomes easier to accept the complaints of one's enemies about abuses they experienced under the apartheid system."
In fact, Gibson's survey shows that South Africans who embrace the TRC view of the nation's apartheid past are more reconciled with their fellow South Africans.

Building a shared consensus history assisted in sharing similarity. That may have been key to permitting each side to better understand the other, and thus engage the ventral mPFC.