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Cultural Diversity Assignment 1 Even though that the racial hostility is commonly assumed to be irrational in its essence, this is far from being truth. One of the most important principles of logic states that there is always a corresponding cause to every consequence. Therefore, the essence of racial tension cannot be analyzed out of practical context. Many psychologists explain ethnic hostility as such that derives of peoples irrational mistrust towards each other. Racial tension is being discussed in terms of morality. Such approach cannot be considered as valid because it applies morality in the field where its notions cannot have any value.
For example, heavy snowfall increases the chances of people getting involved in traffic accidents. This might lead us to suggest that snowy weather is immoral but the sheer absurdity of such statement is obvious to everyone. The same applies to the discussion of what are the true motivations behind racial tension. First of all, we need to understand that, since racial tension exists despite the best efforts of hawks of political correctness, its true nature must be objective. In other words, such tension is a result of socio-political reality. It appears that the true reason why ethnic mistrust exists among people is scarcity of natural resources on this planet.
These resources are limited, while the growth of Earth population gains more momentum every year. There is simply not enough room under the sun for everybody. Yet, on a subconscious level, individual knows that his chances of survival are going to be increased when he becomes a part of group. From the time of his early childhood, such individual learns that the most natural type of social affiliation is closely linked to the issues of race and ethnicity. Belonging to ethnic community gives people sense of uniqueness. Therefore, it is quite natural for people to associate themselves with their cultural backgrounds.
However, this is being done not for the sake of celebrating diversity, but because it is much easier to exploit society's weaknesses if one is a member of ethnically secluded community. Racial hostility has always been a factor of socio-political reality, therefore, such hostility cannot be thought of as something irrational. William Wilson in his study The Roots of Racial Tension: Urban Ethnic Neighborhoods suggests that racial tension is likely to remain an important factor of social reality in America: The research we conducted strongly suggests that neighborhoods in urban America, especially in large metropolises like Chicago, will remain divided, racially and culturally for the foreseeable future (Wilson). As practice shows, there is no ethnic tension to be found within racially homogeneous societies.
This is because of lack of social preconditions that would result in such tension. In other words on social level, racial hostility can only exist within the societies where the concept of multiculturalism is being actively promoted. This leads to a paradox situation, when racial tension increases proportionally to the amount of applied efforts to reduce such tension. Multiculturalism is gradually turning into secularism, when every ethnic group pursues its own interests, instead of becoming part of a whole. Racial minorities are taught to identify themselves with a place, where they or their ancestors came from. This encourages a social secularism, on their part.
The validity of this statement becomes obvious when we analyze situation with promoting the concept of multiculturalism in America. There is also another important factor that increases the level of ethnic tension within multicultural societies the fact that promoted social values do not correspond to the empirical values. We are being continuously told that people are equal, while this is nothing but the example of wishful thinking in its worst. George Orwell once said that all people are equal, but some of us are more equal than others. When individual realizes that his metal abilities do not allow him to successfully compete with others, he becomes angry. He comes to the point when he realizes that his observations of objective reality do not correspond to what he was being thought in school.
This inevitably causes such person to think that the true reason for his inability to achieve a professional goal is social injustice. However, such injustice needs to be visualized, in order to be sensed on emotional level. The best way to do it is to associate social injustice with a certain racial group. For example, the reason why Black people often underachieve has always been related to the issue of discrimination. In its turn, discrimination is associated with White people. This is how racial tension originates.
It appears as if there was a certain force behind people of different cultural backgrounds being continually alienated from each other. The most dangerous about it is the fact that this force disguises itself as something opposite to what it really is. On the surface, political correctness strives for more tolerance, yet the practical effects of this concept are far from what they are expected to be. There are African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanics. The emphasis is being put on the racial characteristics of every particular group by very same people that never get tired repeating that the race is not important There is no official censorship on freedom of expression but there is one, de facto.
People have to be very careful what they say and how they say it. In its turn, this leads to situation when citizens have to be suppressing their thoughts. Their frustration with this fact finds the way to vent out sooner or later, but usually it happens in not the most politically correct form, causing self-appointed watchers of public morality to come up with further accusations of racism. The existence of racial hostility between many Americans from different ethnic backgrounds is a fact, but the worst way to deal with it is to deny it altogether.
As practice shows, every attempt to restructure society, according to some utopia principles, had failed. The same is going to happen with multicultural utopia. We can only talk of minimizing the harmful effects of such hostility. Along with the objective reasons for the racial tension among citizens, there are also many subjective ones. Despite the proclaimed concept of equality, the governments provide institutionalized preferences, when it comes to entitling people with certain privileges. Thomas Jackson in his article What is Racism?
makes a good observation: Filipinos and El Salvadorans are doubtless astonished to discover that simply by setting foot in the United States they are entitled to affirmative action preferences over native-born Whites, but can they be blamed for accepting them? (Jackson). This, of course, does not help reducing the level of racial hostility between people. Such hostility appears to be induced by both, natural and artificial factors. Natural factors, while maintaining racial tension between people at certain level, do not result in continuous increase of such tension. It is the hysterical e racism campaign, which actually encourages people of different racial affiliation to mistrust each other. We can draw parallels between American society being obsessed with fighting racism and Inquisitions witch-hunt.
Back then, there were many eyewitness accounts of evil witches flying overhead and causing all kinds of disturbances with their magic powers. In the same way Americans begin to see concealed racism even in advertising, when there is no colored person included. Let us summarize the main points of this paper: 1) Racial tension is caused by the variety of socio-political circumstances and it is wrong to suggest that the essence of such tension is irrational. 2) The intensity of racial tension within society is directly related to promotion of multiculturalism. 3) Many social measures that are designed to reduce the intensity of racial intolerance in multicultural society result in something completely opposite. This is because they are based on the denial of objective reality. 4) The complete elimination of racial tension between people is theoretically impossible, for as long as racial affiliation continue to define individuals psyche.
Nevertheless, it appears that the intensity of racial mistrust, in every particular case, can be reduced by positive personal experience. It is only through fair competition that people learn how to respect each others differences. Ethnic groups within the society are usually able to settle their relations very fast, if government refrains from attempting to regulate such relations. As practice shows, regulating racial affairs with the mean of wishful thinking, can never be successful. Assignment 2 The ability to critically assess the reality derives out persons skill to relate various abstract categories to his empirical observations.
In cases when empirical observations contradict the expected logical conclusions, one needs to know how to prioritize the incoming information, in order to come to a truthful statement, regarding every particular topic of discussion. This is the essence of critical thinking. When we analyze controversial topic, we try defining its problematic properties. It is important to understand why this particular topic became controversial, in the first place.
Is it because the certain issues, contained in the topic, are considered to be inappropriate to discuss openly? If so, is it because of the moral factors being involved or is it because the line of arguments cannot be maintained at academic level? First of all, critic needs to define all the dimensions of the problem, so that he would be able to look at it from different prospective's. Also, it is crucial to separate the facts from assumptions, before discussion even begins. For example, it is pointless to logically criticize Christian doctrine, if such criticism is directed at believers, because they do not know how to use reasoning to defend their point of view.
The validity of any doctrine is based on facts and not on assumptions. Therefore, is someone refers to commonly accepted knowledge, or to universally applicable principles, as the part of argument; it must be brushed aside as such that has no logical value. Very often people use moral reasoning to defend their point of view. But since there are no universally accepted principles of morality, their argument can only remain valid within a particular social settings.
Religious morality is based on opposing right against wrong. Sometimes religious morality coincides with consequential morality, but it does not happen very often. For Christian, sickness and ugliness are good, because these categories are ultimate pathways to death, which is associated with the kingdom of heaven. To realize the validity of this statement one only needs to compare ancient Greek sculptures with the images of countless saints depicted on icons.
Still, the contemporary morality is largely based on this obscure religion. When people are being moral, they cannot be reasonable and other way around. Therefore, it is questionable whether the moral reasoning can be admitted as the legitimate element of logical thinking. In order for us to be able to think critically, we need to know how to evaluate every particular topic, so that we could choose the proper type of rationalizing. Racial tension is best evaluated from biological prospective. In addition, we can use the statistical data, because only this will allow us to remain focused on the topic.
This is why I deliberately refrained from making statements that do not carry any semantic meaning and are only meant to serve as catch-phrases, such as hate is lame, we are all the same. While we critically analyze a specific issue, it is often necessary to address the opposing point of view. However, as practice shows, arguing parties are rarely able to stay within logical boundaries of reasoning. One of the recently formulated laws of Internet forums states: The probability of being compared to Hitler rises in geometrical progression to the duration of an argument.
When we discuss the issue of racial intolerance this especially becomes the case. This is why I tried to only use logical approach for evaluating the problem, throughout the paper. Bibliography: Jackson, T. What is Racism? May 2, 2001.
Stormfront. Racialist Library. Retrieved February 25, 2007 from web Wilson, W. The Roots of Racial Tension: Urban Ethnic Neighborhoods. 2005. Globetrotter. Berkley.
Retrieved February 25, 2007 from web Williams, W. Racial Diversity at the Expense of Intellectual Diversity. November 4, 2006. Capitalism Magazine. Retrieved February 25, 2007 from web Williams, W. Discrimination, Prejudice and Preferences.
October 3, 2006. Capitalism Magazine. Retrieved February 25, 2007 from web
Free research essays on topics related to: racial tension, socio political reality, moral reasoning, racial intolerance, racial affiliation
Research essay sample on Socio Political Reality Racial Tension
