Aesthetic Realism : Jobs, Feelings, & Philosophy

Racism in the US has been exacerbated by worry about jobs, with so many millions of people desperate for jobs.  The latest issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known is a must-read on this subject.  I admire so much what Chairman of Education Ellen Reiss writes there.  It is the clearest, kindest argument for economic justice in 2012 that I've seen.  And the way of seeing people expressed in this article is the complete opposite of prejudice.    

Alliance of Ethics & Art

Here is a terrific anti-racism website!  Great to see on a day when England's football captain, John Terry, is in court accused of racial abuse of another premier league player during a game last October --and I sure hope he didn't do it.  

Aesthetic Realism has the answer to racism - Rich Mkhondo Says It Straight

I grew up in England, and I well remember playing football (soccer) late into the summer evening with my friends.  All we needed was a ball, a couple of t shirts thrown on the ground for goal posts, and there, we had a game.  And I became a passionate fan of Tottenham Hotspur -- I think it was because I liked the name as much as anything.  

Eli Siegel, the great poet, critic, and founder of Aesthetic Realism, said that sport is close to art.  I was so surprised when I first heard that, but as I thought about it I saw that it's true.  It makes me so grateful to know that something I loved but saw, sorry to say, as frankly low-class, has dignity and large meaning. 

Studying Aesthetic Realism I have been thrilled seeing how football puts together opposites, such as freedom and order, the individual and the collective, continuity and discontinuity. 

Getting to the main subject of this blog, I was moved and so glad to read articles such as “Racism Deserves to Get the Red Card,” by Rich Mkhondo, the important South African journalist who was Chief Communications Officer for the 2010 World Cup. 

Racism has been in the news lately in England, and it makes me ashamed and angry that it’s even an issue in 2012.  Mr. Mkhondo knows what he’s talking about, and I’m grateful to him for his writing which is helping make known the one education that can really banish racism, from the football pitch, from society, and from our own hearts and minds.