A Powerful Article Against Racism

There is an important article by Dr. Jaime Torres that has recently come to my attention, Aesthetic Realism Can End Racism and Prejudice.  In it he speaks about his early life growing up in Puerto Rico and how ethnicity was seen including by himself and others, and then about his experiences as he settled in New York.  What he later learned from Aesthetic Realism about the cause of racism where it begins in the self of every person could change America and the world.  Through what he writes, his conviction, clarity, and eloquence on the subject, everyone can have more feeling both about what people go through who are seen with prejudice, AND that this cheap, ugly state of mind really can successfully be opposed and ended.
I respect and am grateful to have learned from the way Dr. Torres places Eli Siegel's scholarly, passionate and completely unequivocal opposition to racism, right from the earliest years of his life.  

Aesthetic Realism and Anthropology

Consultant and anthropologist Arnold Perey teaches a terrific class at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation titled "Anthropology Is About You and Everyone."  It is eye-opening in terms of scholarship and because of the deep feelings it causes you to have, about persons of long ago and far away and also about those you talk to every day! 

Dr. Perey is one of the people from whom I've learned most on the subject of racism and how to oppose it, with great benefits including in my work of over 30 years as a teacher in New York City. 

This is what Dr. Perey writes on his website: 

"This class demonstrates with precise and vivid evidence how people everywhere in the world, including yourself--whether you live in a NY apartment or a pandanus-roof home in Papua New Guinea--can at last be understood with the depth, kindness, and scientific accuracy that humanity so needs.  
"It's through the principles of Aesthetic Realism, founded by poet, critic, and educator Eli Siegel that the full reality of a person's feelings--your feelings--can be seen truly.  This is the knowledge that can end racism and prejudice, as well as ill will and cruelty in homes, economies, and among nations--a statement I make carefully, definitely, and with great hope."

And I say, because of what he's learned from Aesthetic Realism, Arnold Perey should be teaching America! 

The next semester starts on Wednesday, January 21, 2015.
More information about classes at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. 

Aesthetic Realism and Sojourner Truth: "A Woman Whose Name Was Truth," by Karen Van Outryve

"A Woman Whose Name Was Truth" is the title of an important and moving article by Aesthetic Realism consultant and poet Karen Van Outryve. It is about the great American abolitionist, Sojourner Truth.

With the recent events in Ferguson, MO, I hope that everyone in the US can read about her life, what she endured and the strength of mind, the ethics she had as a person growing up in the most difficult and painful circumstances. In this paper we learn what slavery came from, and it's clearly the same ugly state of mind that causes racism today. She is an example for us all, and through the principles of Aesthetic Realism Karen Van Outryve enables her words and actions to REALLY change us for the better.

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See further resources on this important and thrilling philosophy at "Aesthetic Realism on Art and Life"