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RACISM IS MORALLY REPUGNANT



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RACISM IS MORALLY REPUGNANT

1. WE HAVE A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY TO FIGHT AGAINST RACISM EVERYWHERE

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 47.

Whenever I meet personal discrimination on account of my race and color I shall protest. If the discrimination is old and deep seated and sanctioned by law, I shall deem it my duty to make my grievance known, to bring it before the organs of public opinion and to the attention of men of influence, and to urge relief in courts and legislatures. I will not, because of inertia or timidity or even sensitiveness, allow new discriminations to become usual and habitual. To this end I will make it my duty without ostentation, but with firmness, to assert my right to vote, to frequent places of public entertainment and to appear as a man among men.


2. NO FREEDOM FOR WHITES WITHOUT THE LIBERATION OF NON-WHITES

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 564-565. But, fortunately, there can be no leisure, no freedom, no enduring wealth for the white minority of mankind, even though today they are powerful, so long as the great dark majority of human beings are slaves. The future of the darker races is thus involved with the future of the white race, and all of us march, if we march at all, toward the physical survival, the economic equality, and the spiritual freedom of all men

of every race and color.
3. FIGHTING RACISM IS THE FIRST STEP TOWARD ELIMINATING VIOLENCE

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 726. The Pacifist today who takes his job seriously and sees war for what it really is, will role up his sleeves first and attack race prejudice; and then he will attack all general, colonels, captains and ammunition makers; and then he will attack military schools and cadets; and finally, he may get us to the place where the world will realize that war is hell.



THEORIES OF RACIAL INFERIORITY ARE WRONG

1. SOCIAL SUPREMACY DOES NOT PROVE RACIAL SUPERIORITY

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE HORIZON, 1985, p. 97.

It is true that the lighter skinned races are leading civilization today. It is not true that civilization is the invention of the white race or that they have made the greatest contributions to it. It is false that nay race has or ever will have a right to monopolize the earth and its fruit, or the human mind and its thoughts.

“White Supremacy” is the last scared yell of the dog about to be beaten.
2. PEOPLE OF GREAT ABILITY COME FROM ALL RACES

W.E.B. DuBois, Social Philosopher. SELECTIONS FROM THE CRISIS, 1983, p. 8 1-82.

It is argued however, that it may be granted that the physical stamina of all races is probably approximately the same and the physical comeliness is rather a matter of taste and selection than of absolute racial difference. However, when it comes to intellectual ability the races differ so enormously that superior races must in self-defense repel the inferior sternly, even brutally. Two things, however, must be said in answer to this: First, the prejudice against the Jews, age long and world wide is surely no based on inferior ability.

we have only one name to Jeremiah, Dlsraeli and Jesus Christ to set our minds at rest on the point. Moreover, if we compare the intellectual ability of Teuton and Chinese which is inferior? Or, if we take Englishman and Bantu, is the difference a difference of native ability or of training and environment? The answer to this is simple: We do not know. But arguing from all known facts and analogies we must certainly admit in the words of the secretary of the First International Races Congress, that “an impartial investigator would be inclined to look upon all the various important peoples of the world as, to all intents and purposes, essentially equals in intellect, enterprise, morality and physique.”


RIANE EISLER

FEMINIST




Life And Work

The philosopher of Riane Eisler’s was shaped by an early brush with death. Born in Vienna, Austria, around the time Hitler came to power, she became at the age of six a refugee from the Nazis. She and her parents, fleeing for their lives, escaped Nazi Germany on one of the last boats to leave Germany. The very next boat, the St. Louis, became a famous example of ill-fate through it’s portrayal in the film The Voyage of the Damned. Eisler, fundamentally changed by the experience, recalls “as a child standing there at the quay by the water, and there was this boat out there. It was inconceivable to me how people could be so cruel as to send these people back to death.” This experience was one Eisler drew on when writing her most famous work, The Chalice and the Blade in 1987. She described the country from which she escaped as one of the prime examples of a “dominator” culture, which is her term for a hierarchical society characterized by violence.


The rest of Eisler’s childhood was spent in Cuba, growing up in the Havana tenements, until she emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen. Soon, she began the multidisciplinary studies which were to color her life’s work. She studied sociology and anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles, earning Phi Beta Kappa status. She went on to earn a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. For the rest of her life, Eisler has been involved in research, writing, teaching, lecturing and community organizing. Though she is most famous for her books, she has also been a professor, teaching at the University of California and Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles.
Eisler is active in the political arena, sponsoring legislation to protect the human rights of women and children. She founded organizations such as the Los Angeles Women’s Center Legal Program, the first of its kind in the United States. Probably her most famous affiliation, though, is with the Center for Partnership Studies, a non-profit organization which she was encouraged to create after witnessing the grass­roots response to The Chalice and the Blade. Today, many college courses and university courses utilize The Chalice and the Blade as a resource for study. This is fitting, considering the fact that the book has been called “the most significant work published in all our lifetimes” and “the most important book since Darwin’s Origin of Species.” Due to her influence, the network of Centers for Partnership Education is expanding worldwide. Approximately twenty exist in the world right now.
In October of 1992, the world’s first International Partnership Conference was held. The conference, held in Crete, attracted more than five-hundred people from forty different countries. Eisler is also a member of the General Evolution Research group, a group of scientists who have dedicated themselves to view living systems differently than the prevailing, rigid Aristotelian mindset. Eisler continues to lecture and give keynote addresses at many symposia, as well as organizing conferences on basic human rights. Most recently, she has embarked on a tour in support of her latest book, Sacred Pleasure, which is a history of human sexuality and an argument concerning the taboo nature of the sexual urge in culture.



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