Aesthetic Realism Can End Racism and Prejudice

This talk was originally given on March 17, 2001 at Harvard University. It later became a chapter in the book, Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism (Orange Angle Press, 2004)

 A second edition, printed by Path Press, was published in 2024. 

 

Aesthetic Realism Can End Racism and Prejudice
By Dr. Jaime R. Torres

The federal government statistics continue to show an alarming number of hate crimes motivated by race and ethnicity. That means that thousands of men and women--as real as you and me—-still undergo racial profiling, beatings, and worse. As a Puerto Rican, I also have been the object of racism. And the question is: why after years of so many people fighting courageously for civil rights—many of them losing their lives—and after passionate pleas from churches and universities, why is it that racism and prejudice still persist in our country? The answer, I believe, is presented here today.  

I have learned from Aesthetic Realism this new and crucial thing: prejudice doesn't begin with race but from the human desire to have contempt for what we see as different from ourselves.  Without this knowledge, people won't be able to see that something we cherish in ourselves--the drive to have contempt--is the thing that can hurt our lives, and also be hurtful to others. When contempt is seen and criticized it changes, not into tolerance but into honest respect.  It is my firm belief that the study of Aesthetic Realism can end prejudice.
 

We Have to See Where We’re Unjust

 

People have been confused and pained by the fact that persons who have suffered the injustice of discrimination--like African-Americans and Latinos—-have also been unjust and prejudiced themselves. Puerto Ricans have discriminated against Dominicans and vice versa; an African American from Harlem has looked down on a black person from Jamaica and vice versa. And contempt is also what has a person from Cincinnati feel superior to someone in Cleveland.
 

Growing up in Puerto Rico, where most of us are a mixture of African, Taino Indian and Spanish blood, I got the message early that some people—because of their skin tone, the texture of their hair, or how much money they had—-were beneath me and my family.
 

While I never considered myself a “racist,” when my grandmother would point to her own cheek and tell me in Spanish, “Don’t bring any girls to my house darker than this,” “no traigas muchachas aquí más oscuras que yo,” I did not object. I later learned from Aesthetic Realism, that I used the praise I got from my family to feel I was special and superior, and that other people were less real, unimportant and beneath me.
 

When I came to New York to study at Fordham University in the 1970s, I was outraged by the racial violence I saw African Americans endure, and the daily awful discrimination Puerto Ricans suffered here on the mainland. But I made no connection between my feeling against this injustice to the way I refused to join clubs and study groups in college that had Blacks and New York-born Puerto Ricans. Shamefully I felt I was better than they were, and that intellectually they would bring me down.
 

But I also was the brunt of racist comments like "he got into school through a quota," and "you won't make it academically here." Also, at times when someone didn’t understand my accent he would say, “You are in America now—learn English!” And on a few occasions, while looking for an apartment, I would suddenly hear “It was rented,” when in fact it was not. Once, I overheard a broker tell a landlord on the phone about me, “Don’t worry, he is light skin and a professional.” In every instance, I felt angry and humiliated. But I didn’t use this injustice to be kinder and to have more feeling for what others have endured, but to feel this world is an insincere mess and I had the right to see anyone or anything as I please, while acting as if I were above it all. My outrage was not enough to change my own prejudice and how I saw other people.
 

In Aesthetic Realism consultations I began to learn—-and this is what changed me—that even with all the injustice, what I wanted most was to like how I saw the world different from myself. In an early consultation, as I spoke about not being able to "connect" with others, I was asked:
 

Consultants-- Do you like people?

Jaime Torres -- People say that I'm nice.

Consultants-- If those people were able to see what’s in your mind, do you think they would like it?

Jaime Torres - Oh no!

Consultants -- Do you know the difference between acting nice and being kind?

Jaime Torres -- Wow, I don't think I do!

Consultants --  Usually when you act nice, you want to be liked first. If you want to be kind you have to think about what will have another person better off.

Consultants -- Do you think you have fooled everyone...

I did think so, and they explained this was contempt. They asked:

Consultants -- Do you know how much that has hurt you?

 

I didn't. I had thought it was clever to be able to look affable, while inwardly exploiting the shortcomings in others--real or imagined. I came to feel that what I saw as an achievement was really the cause of my inability to have true feelings for others.
 

The Profit Motive Encourages Prejudice

 

What I was learning in consultations helped me see my whole life newly. As a Hispanic doctor, I was hoping to be useful to others and felt proud of taking care of many people, including some in the poorest areas in New York.
 

But I also wanted to make lots of money, own several homes and have an office on Park Avenue. What I saw as my comfort went against justice to other people, and increasingly I felt agitated.
 

This is what many doctors feel and it’s perilous because one way to ease the nervousness is by becoming cold, and the results can be deadly. I was able to understand the battle I was in that made me so cold and distant from my patients.
 

In another consultation I learned about a central cause of prejudice—-seeing other people as only different from myself. My consultants asked:
 

Consultants -- Do you think you are more alike or different from your patients?

Jaime Torres - Oh, different.

Consultants -- That's very dangerous because as soon as you see yourself as different the ego wants to feel superior and have contempt, and you won't be able to have the empathy you want to have... and from that many of the horrors of the world have occurred.

 

As I wrote the assignments my consultants gave me—including to write ten ways I was the same and different from my patients--I felt new care for them and what they have endured.
 

Biology and Genetics Are Against Racism and Prejudice

 

One of the important things biology shows is this: if you look at the inside of any person, you would not know if that heart belonged to a person from Africa, South America, China or Scandinavia.
 

Throughout history, however, people impelled by a desire for contempt have tried to prove the superiority of one race over another. A great deal of pseudo-science has come from this, including the Eugenics movement in the 1920’s, and more recently the book The Bell Curve.
 

In the United States between 1911 and 1930, the idea that some people were of superior stock--and therefore had to be kept “pure”-- was used to pass laws limiting racially mixed marriages and immigration from many countries.
 

In 1923 Eli Siegel wrote one of the most important essays ever written: "The Equality of Man," in which he scientifically disproved the Eugenic theory by giving step by step evidence that if all people were given similar conditions—enough food, a place to live, education, enough money, they would be equal.
 

I respect and admire him so much because throughout his life, he explained and fought injustice wherever he saw it. And Eli Siegel also showed the beautiful, ethical alternative. His love for truth, for the best in humanity, made him courageous. This essay--written in Baltimore and at a time when Eugenics was popular and backed up by powerful people in government--reads in part:
 

"Mind needs nourishment, care, and training all by itself... And the fact is plain enough that millions and millions of people from the beginning of the world…have not got this mind's nourishment, care and training. Their lives were forced to be led so, to get food enough for their stomachs, was all that they could do...I say it is wrong, to say that any one's mind is inferior, until it has been completely seen that it has been given all the nourishment, care and training that it needs or could get."

 

In the year 2000 genetic evidence confirmed what was presented in "The Equality of Man." One of the important findings of the Human Genome Project was the showing that "the racial categories recognized by society are not reflected on the genetic level." In fact, all human beings share 99.99% of the same genetic material! And whatever differences exist are literally skin deep only.
 

Wrote researcher Dr. Eric Lander: "There's no scientific evidence to support substantial differences between groups...The tremendous burden of proof goes to anyone who wants to assert those differences." [NY Times 8-22-00]
 

As you can see there is no scientific basis for racism; the only reason for racism and prejudice is the human desire to have contempt for what is different from ourselves, “el deseo de tener desprecio por lo que es diferente a nosotros.” That is why it's so emergent that people learn how to like the way they see other people. Aesthetic Realism is the education that can teach that way of seeing that has a person sure that being fair to another is the same as self-expression, pleasure and pride.