Thursday, March 19, 2015

What do anthropologists need to learn in order to really address the issue of racism?


Arnold Perey PhD writes in Aesthetic Realism, a New Perspective for Anthropology & Sociology:

"For anthropology to be relevant to ending the horror of racism today, we must be able to answer these two desperately urgent questions: (1) What is the cause of racism? and (2) How can it be eliminated completely from human relations?"  

Dr. Perey's website, remarkably, answers both questions.  As we have issues of race and racism erupting in so many countries, what Arnold Perey has to say, based on what he learned from Eli Siegel, Aesthetic Realism, and the Chair of Education, Ellen Reiss, is about as important as anything I can think of.  He has studied this subject professionally, through his field work -- notably in New Guinea -- and as an instructor of anthropology at college and at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. He has been published numerous times on the subject, and I must say, as a former student of his both in Aesthetic Realism consultations and in the education classes he has taught for decades at the Foundation, what he could say to America and the world could literally end racism.  



Monday, March 09, 2015

Selma & Aesthetic Realism

On March 8th, 2015 thousands and thousands of people marched across the appallingly-named Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama:



John Lewis said "There's still work left to be done. Get out there and push and pull until we redeem the soul of America," I respect John Lewis immensely, for what he did at Selma and during the whole Civil Rights Era and also since then. So much has already been done and yet look at the disparity in this nation -- the racial inequality and also the economic disparity. Both are shocking and yet almost taken for granted by many people, as it seems so hard to bring about real, meaningful, permanent change. When people are studying contempt they, or we, will no longer take it as personal achievement to look down on another person, whether because of their skin tone or because of their lack of money. In fact, when all America is learning about the fight between respect and contempt, and how respect is what makes us stronger, kinder, prouder, surer -- more ourselves -- there will be such an outcry about injustice that America WILL change, one person at a time and as an entire nation. For thrilling and categorical evidence of this, see (1)the writing of Ellen Reiss, Chair of Education of Aesthetic Realism, in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, (2) Arnold Perey's beautiful and important novel Gwe, and (3) the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company's comment on and singing of Woody Guthrie's American folk classic, "This Land Is Your Land."


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