DIY: open up your world

Kids, Cincinnati Enquirer

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With so much prejudice, even hate, filling the news now, isn't it time to step back and decide what you want your world to look like and be? An all-white or all-black or all-brown world is NOT a viable solution. Such a solution would entail either shutting yourself off from the majority of humanity in a strongly gated, highly exclusive community or mass genocide. Seems to me the better answer is to teach yourself how to deal with diversity.

To exercise prejudice may be hardwired into humans, as Morgan Freeman points out in the video below--it's a my tribe vs. your tribe mindset. Seems to me it's time for us to outgrow the tribal mindset. As Akhenaten (Egyptian Pharaoh (-1354 BC) said:

True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.

The video (granted, the study is of mice) here shows that simply associating with someone different opens the door to empathy and ultimately a world with more tolerance.

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The study referred to in the video is reported in Rodent empathy is environmental and not genetic by the Washington Post. The study itself is available at eLife.

Cindy Krantz in the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote in 2000 about Preparing kids for a multicultural world. In her article she breaks down the demographics then. For an analysis of demographics in the U.S. in 2015, check out the Wikipedia article.

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U.S. demographics in 1990, Cincinnati Enquirer

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Kids in kindergarten mingle happily with other cultures. Then the prejudices of their parents take over. We can change that.

Stepping down from my soapbox now.

-- Marge