Monday, December 19, 2005

Si i found the way to dissolve racism

I was reading a book about business and the most interesting thing i read. The author was talking about solutions to problems operate assuming the problem. However, in science, in addition to haveing this notion of 'solution' they also have a notion of 'dissolution'. Basically he was advocating designing a environment/context/world in which any problem has not solution, but rather dissolves into the world.

MLK in part of his most famous quote said "judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin". I think this was prophetic, not only because it was idealistic, but also because it held the solution to the problem of racism. In a related incident I was browsing a bookstore and read part of a chapter that said that we could end racism by discriminating! The author went on to say that the process of discriminating itself was neutral. The problem was that people actually stopped discriminating between people and that posed a problem. They made the first distinction between people: race. And that was it. What people didn't do was keep discriminating according to other factosrs: integrity, communicative ability, charm, deceitfulness, gumption, etc. There are a whole host of characteristics that people use unconsciously to discriminate between people: who's honest, who is reliable, who is shifty etc.

So what's the solution? Well, it's actually a dis-solution. It's a method to envelop race as one variable in a person's character. It's called paying attention to character. And how do you do it? Pay attention to character. The problem is such that no person or group has come up with a relatively consistent and coherent way to analyze people. The feild of psychology is rife with an obsession of stimulus-response and white rodents. Psychiatrists wan't to prescribe then diagnose the side effects. Astrologists have too much make-up on. Psychotherapists want to talk without discussing why they're asking such probing questions. . .

I'm deliberately being a victim of a different -ism (occupationalism instead of racism) to segue into the point. The point being that there is no widespread coherent model of how people function that enables people to create a different set of standards about human behavior. So i propose that someone somewhere come up with like five criteria upon which everyone can be categorized and whose explanatory power is significant. Sure, there are all kinds of typologies and metaphorical things. . . but INTP says nothing about gumption or integrity. . . sometimes, sagttariuses are stupid not witty, etc. I wan't something that enables people to not see all the flaws in the system, but to see the beauty of it.

In short, the way to end racism is to start discriminating. Discriminating as a process, not discrimination as a product. We have to distinguish between people who have integrity, who communicate well, and all kinds of other things that make life work but aren't scripted by genes, race, gender, birthdate, section of the city or what have you. A set of criteria that are based on choice.
Bookmark and Share