Allan Michael, Monique Michael, Jaime Torres, & Arnold Perey speak
on how Aesthetic Realism explains the cause of racism and the
solution at the Eli Siegel Memorial in Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Maryland

For people to be able to end the horror of racism, 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 social relations?

In well over 30 years of careful study, I have seen unquestionably that Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the great educator Eli Siegel (1902-1978), answers the hitherto unanswered questions about racism I pointed to earlier:What is the cause? How can it end?

The powerful, thrilling answer to these questions is in essays I recommend EVERYONE read, written by Ellen Reiss, the Chairman of Education of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Here are two among them:

1. Words, Truth, and the Confederate Flag. Chicago Defender [9 March 2000 & more journals]

As an American and a person passionately against racism, I say it is wrong for the Confederate battle flag to be flown over South Carolina's statehouse building or any other, and I am proud to agree with the 50,000 people who demonstrated on Martin Luther King Day demanding its removal.  

It is abominable that vestiges of it are in Georgia, Mississippi and other Southern state flags. At the heart of this matter is what Aesthetic Realism, founded by Eli Siegel, the eminent poet and historian, explains: there is a fight in every human being — in me — between respect for the world and contempt for it.  READ MORE

2. Racism Can End. The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known [25 June 1997]

In Racism Can End, Ellen Reiss describes with powerful insight and great kindness--needed in classrooms today--how a young girl, Heather, becomes a racist. Joining her, the first hand observations and study given as talks by Monique Michael, Allan Michael, Dr. Jaime Torres, and I, who spoke on Eli Siegel day in Baltimore, are reprinted. We document the way Aesthetic Realism understands racism and has changed it. READ MORE

See further commentaries by Ms. Reiss about Racism: The Cause and Solution

 

Further Work on How Aesthetic Realism Sees Racism Cause of Racism In Anthropology Newsletter (American Anthropological Association) The Real Opposition to Racism In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known Aesthetic Realism: The Solution to Racism In The Black World Today "Teaching Indian Culture in the US." Published in the India Tribune and other English language Indian journals. How do we combat the desire for contempt, which cripples one's ability to understand or have good will for people of another culture? Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism edited by Alice Bernstein This work will be seen as a classic. This book, writes Ms. Bernstein, "is being published with a sense of urgency and hope; urgency because racism is still rampant in the world; hope, because there is a true, practical, kind, learnable, and yes, even beautiful answer." Click here for more about Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism A note on Eli Siegel's great anti-racist essay "The Equality of Man" (1923) "About Five Writers Eli Siegel Refers to in “The Equality of Man” (1923): Galton, Terman, McDougall, Nietzsche, Mencken." Today, these famous writers are mostly forgot, except Nietzsche and, to a degree, Mencken. When Eli Siegel—who was to found the philosophy Aesthetic Realism in 1941—criticized them in 1923 he questioned some of the leading lights of the contemporary world for their racist notions. Click here for more on Eli Siegel's thorough and brave opposition to racism.