I am observing society in the process of making history-changing breakthroughs through public discussions about the social concept of race and its dubious origins. Injecting information into our culture about the fallacy of race will eventually have a positive impact on many facets of our culture. This is sensible at least as a truism and it also has some empirical evidence to support it.
Can it cure human kind of prejudice? I argue a vehement, “NO!”
Unfortunately, the apparent belief in the dominant disciplines is that their view of people and populations of people is not only solely relevant but sufficient. They seem to believe we can solve problems within the same model that created them while ignoring even stronger evidence that the fundamental forces behind prejudice remain untreated.
It is important to point out that extant progress is commendable and extremely encouraging - and it is not the wrong effort. However, argued here is that it’s incomplete and insufficient, and a more effective effort should be an even bigger hybrid of disciplines. Connecting the evidence and disciplines promises to better empower future generations to quell prejudice regardless of target group. Such would enhance the development of their inherent but mainly untapped abilities to override such forces. It is argued here that by doing so we are more completely treating the problem and getting closer to root cause.
In a nutshell, the rest of the story stipulates that prejudice will never disappear unless individuals understand and have command of their own nature. We have enough of scientific findings now to move ahead into translation and application. But, such command of the self will never happen through prescriptive attitudes and especially not through shut-up-and-join-the-bandwagon demands wielded on us by many groups disinterested in any other view. Indeed, it seems some groups are even as interested or more interested in being center stage as they are in solving problems.
We cannot blame them for they are simply human beings. Although shifting paradigms to embrace and capitalize on new information and discoveries is the hallmark of human progress, it never occurs without viscous resistance. If human beings never did triumph over this resistance, we might still be living under environmental equilibrium and not having such a discussion let alone on an internet blog. There always have been and always will be refractory forces in human nature that get in the way, and addressing prejudice is just another human endeavor that suffers from human flaw.
Today more than ever in my own lifetime, I witness the psychological phenomenon of resistance to attitude change. One way this phenomenon has been manifested in the U.S. is the growing division of political ideologies through the almost blanket dismissal of opposing arguments as political sophistry, even under conspiracy-infested distrust.
It certainly seems that both dominant political parties truly believe their view is absolutely correct. Indeed, if one party said the sky was blue and proved it with a spectrometer and the survey of a billion people, the other would find a way to refute it as political spin, and claim the sky is indigo. This same disease seems to have also infected the sciences. To truly solve social problems we will have to disinfect our efforts and truly work together publically as well as privately.
Education on History
The recent tours and educational programs about Race have probably seen the highest degree of viewing and interest ever. Moreover, I think most people have learned significant concepts from these tours. This is astounding and remarkable.
The history of the origins of the concept of Race is very important to understand and discuss. It is human kind’s history – and if there is anything that history can teach us, it is that we can and should learn from history.
However, this history simply reveals what contexts the true origins of Race became manifest. Thus, history alone is the incomplete picture and the wrong overarching story is told.
What this article asserts is that the bigger story and most relevant to eliminating prejudice en masse permanently is that we all have built in tendencies to be prejudiced, but we can be retrained, which is ever the bit evidenced in how this has manifested in history and the resulting concept of Race.
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