There is an interesting editorial in Science Magazine about how to prevent genocides. Editorial - May 30, 2008 Perhaps this idea can also prevent racial tensions. For example, when I was in the UK recently, I read an article in which a comment jumped out at me. People there (and in many Western countries) are facing immigration problems. The writer made the comment that decisions about how to bring in immigrants and how many are being made at the governmental level, but the people making the decisions are not actually living with the immigrants. The people who are touched directly by an influx of immigrants are the lower class people. They come face to face with people taking their jobs and making cultural changes around them. And they're not equipped to deal with this.
I think it's easy for me to be tolerant of differences in race because I don't always have to deal with them, or they're different enough that they are interesting. Actually, I find that it's not a matter so much of race for me but of values and life style. Or maybe it's not even that. I suppose I could converse and like someone who occasionally uses vulgar language, though I wince inwardly. I think the most important thing is that they are kindly and not violent or have a complete disregard for others. There are two families in my neighborhood who do not fit in with the rest of the neighborhood because they do not value a well-groomed garden and house, use bad language, and are loud and a little obnoxious. Ironically, they seem more "difficult" for me than the Hispanic family who lived here for a while and who didn't speak English and felt threatened by having to learn the language, but seemed to "fit in" a little better. Perhaps I'm more tolerant of a more different culture such as Hispanic than what would be considered from my background, "a lower class" of people. I suppose this is my British background coloring my prejudices---class (and usually education) is my touchstone. And, if the Hispanics had been perceived as not having similar values and life styles, I would have probably been just as judgmental.
And yet, I do have interaction with the neighbors who don't "fit in." I know that one family's children has benefitted from living here and it is the next generation who rises to a different level of community living. I have to examine my biases and prejudices, not just from demographics and stories of racism in the news, but with the people from all walks of life that I come in contact with. It is a matter of loving and respecting your neighbor even if you don't understand them or they have different values. But then, what does one value? There are standards for a good society to live up to; such societies need people of good will to make it work. And that leads to Greek philosophy concerning good will as expounded in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. (An interesting article about good will can be found at Good Will.) Of course, this discussion can be continued in accordance with an LDS perspective: don't we believe we are children of God and therefore have sparks of divinity in us and that divinity seeks to reach for the good. But we do not stay static, we need to be using our will for good. And that's the dilemma of earth life, torn between the natural man and the divine within--we are continually making choices, good or ill. And, we cannot really understand others unless we "walk in their moccasins" for a while. I have to remember C. S. Lewis's essay, The Weight of Glory, in which he asks us to look at and value our neighbors:
The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, . . . But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.[xxvi]
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