Opposition To Prejudice and Racism
In one of his earliest essays, “The Equality of Man” (1923), Siegel criticized writers who were promoting eugenics, the theory that intelligence is inherited and some people belong to superior breeds or races, while others are born inferior. He argued that thus far in the history of the world, people have not had equal conditions of life, to bring out their potential abilities, and he asserted that if all men and women had “an equal chance to use all the powers they had at birth, they would be equal.”
According to Aesthetic Realism, racism and prejudice of all kinds begin with the human inclination towards contempt, “the addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Students of the philosophy assert that the racist attitude is not inevitable, but can change if one learns to recognize and criticize contempt. In public forums, individuals of diverse nationalities and cultural backgrounds have described how, through study of Aesthetic Realism, their racism and prejudice changed, not into mere “tolerance” but into a respectful desire to know and to see that the feelings of another are “as real, and as deep, as one’s own.”
On an international level, proponents advocated the study of contempt and good will, as described by Aesthetic Realism, as “The Only Answer to the Mideast Crisis,” in a 1990 advertisement on the op-ed page of the New York Times. To oppose prejudice they recommend that persons of nations who are in conflict “write a soliloquy of 500 words” describing the feelings of a person in the opposing land.
The UN commissioned filmmaker Ken Kimmelman, a consultant on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, to make two anti-prejudice films: Asimbonanga, and Brushstrokes. Kimmelman credits Aesthetic Realism as his inspiration for these films, as well as his 1995 Emmy-award winning anti-prejudice public service film, The Heart Knows Better, based on, and including, a statement by Eli Siegel.
Another noted speaker on the subject of Aesthetic Realism and how it opposes prejudice and racism is Alice Bernstein, whose articles on the subject have been published in hundreds of papers throughout the country, including in her serialized column, “Alice Bernstein & Friends.” Mrs. Bernstein is the editor of The People of Clarendon County (Chicago: Third World Press, 2007), a book that includes a play by Ossie Davis re-discovered by Bernstein, together with historical documents, photographs, and essays about Aesthetic Realism, which she describes as "the education that can end racism." The late Ossie Davis, noted actor and civil rights activist, stated: “Alice Bernstein has dedicated her life to ending racism in this country. ... is writing an introduction based on what she has learned about people and history from Aesthetic Realism which she has studied for decades."
A production of The People of Clarendon County—a Play by Ossie Davis, & the Answer to Racism, presenting Aesthetic Realism as the educational method that explains and changes prejudice and racism, was staged in the Congressional Auditorium of the US Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC on October 21, 2009, with introductory remarks given by House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn.
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Famous quotes containing the words opposition to, opposition, prejudice and/or racism:
“Slavery is founded in the selfishness of mans natureopposition to it, is [in?] his love of justice.... Repeal the Missouri compromiserepeal all compromisesrepeal the declaration of independencerepeal all past history, you still can not repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of mans heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.”
—Abraham Lincoln (18091865)
“Women will not advance except by joining together in cooperative action.... Unlike other groups, women do not need to set affiliation and strength in opposition one against the other. We can readily integrate the two, search for more and better ways to use affiliation to enhance strengthand strength to enhance affiliation.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“Yes, marriage is hateful, detestable. A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequited fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822)
“I dont think Americas the center of the world anymore. I think African women will lead the way [in] ... womens liberation ... The African woman, shes got a country, shes got the flag, shes got her own army, got the navy. She doesnt have a racism problem. Shes not afraid that if she speaks up, her man will say goodbye to her.”
—Faith Ringgold (b. 1934)