Free Custom «White Man, Please Wake Up» Essay Paper

Please, wake up and look around. You are not alone in this world, so you should change your position and attitude towards other people and races. Analyzing history, philosophy and social sciences, I can say that no rational or at least reasonable explanation exists which could explain negative attitude towards blackness and acceptance of whiteness as a rail factor. For a strange coincidence of historical factors and causes, white men have dominated in the world and stipulated the order of social relations and communication patterns. Even today, individual identities differ in content, but the evidence suggests that the psychological factor of identity formation is universal. If it can be inferred that quest for identity achievement is central to all people, then there is a powerful argument for at least a minimal form of equality as a political value.White man, please wake up and start thinking rationally. Probably, you know that in their speeches and proclamations such political and human rights leaders as Martin Luther King and Tomas Jefferson clearly explain the equality of races and false values of whites. While minimal levels of tolerance and security are vitally important, the distinctions that black and white cultures establish in recognizing competence, generating integrity, and supporting mutuality are also critical to the developmental process. Culture largely determines the materials available for identity formation. This tension between the universal and the particular in identity formation holds the analytic key to understanding the relationships between identity and politics. We consider how race, as an example, plays on identity needs and community politics. Having opened the issue of deep-seated differences, we explore the political implications of differentiation. The Declaration of Independence states:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson).

 

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I would say that race, like gender, remains an inescapable component of identity. This is true even if the attributes of race are made up of myth, legend, or stereotypes. Surely nationalities are nonetheless real for being invented. At the same time it is true of race, as with gender, that the areas of overlap and shared characteristics are such that distinctions must always be seen empirically as a matter of degree and probability, rather than as rigid divisions. What are we left with as analysts of identity? What the phenomenon of race makes evident is the fact that there can be no standardized human experience at the level of culture. Race opens our eyes, if they are clouded by a naive humanism, to the phenomenon of variation among human beings--and it does not stop with race or with gender. In fact, variation does not stop with any subset of the species. In some genetically precise sense, each of us is a minority of one.Today, it is high time to stop white man dominance and oppression of other races. And all of us, when our beliefs about our identities are tested against absolute truthfulness, are at least partly fictional creatures. Variation and invention are endemic to the human constitution, but there is a constitution. Martin Luther King explains in his Letter:'when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair" (King).Still, all of us share genetic patterns, cultural similarities, social interactions, and developmental needs and aspirations. The patterns of human development do cross racial, cultural, religious, territorial, and, to some degree, gender-based lines. But the content that fills in those patterns reflects variations introduced by cultural circumstances, economic necessities, accident, and the idiosyncrasies of individual life. What we are left with is the generalized problem of difference. n his view, identity necessarily involves difference. It is the differences that constitute the boundaries of one's identity.A white man! You should take into account the following principles of social communication an existence. For difference implies discrimination, and therein lies the link to the uses--and misuses--of power. A completion of the analysis, however, requires that we account for the fact that identities are as likely to be complementary as they are discriminatory. The capacity of humans to function in webs of myriad interdependent identifications is at least as remarkable as our penchant for the subjugation of distinctive personalities. Culture never can be neutral. It is an active component of every identity. No one acquires an identity in a vacuum or in the abstract. But what politics as an aspect of culture can contribute is not just tolerance but an active approach to policies that will make possible for everyone the achievement of competencies, the sustenance of mutuality, and a respect for humane ways of integrating oneself into the world.

It is high time for all of you to wake up and accept the world and humans' diversity. The dream will lead to peaceful coexistence and a mutual regard for the economic security of all members of the community. Conservatives have also been beset by divisions. The right is distinguished by a curious approach to community; the underlying assumption of conservatism, of whatever kind, is that distinctions and gradations among people are the key to the well-ordered polity. Frederick Douglass describes:"I have been frequently asked how I felt when I found myself in a free State. I have never been able to answer the question with any satisfaction to myself. It was a moment of the highest excitement I ever experienced" (Douglass, 1997, p. n.d).As conservatives have gained power in the West, their political parties and movements have been beset by internal divisions between two concepts of how to act on this belief: one depends on traditional "family" values and the moral customs and authority structures of Western civilization, which, taken together, form a potent identity construct.White men! Please, wake up from a nightmare called racism. You know that the traditionalist image is one that implicitly favors one culture, and very nearly one race, over others. The individualist image avoids the problems of race, gender, and class by resolving all issues into a matter of individual striving. Taken by itself, neither deals with the world as we know it: a global community in which race, gender, religion, nationality, class, and culture are very real indeed, and in which the moral superiority of one over another cannot be easily demonstrated. But identity is not a zero-sum game. Identity achieved by victimization is pathology. As we have shown, identity formation, and human development generally, is an essentially process composed simultaneously of individual striving and social support. A politics based on human development, rather than on material gain or moral absolutes, has the possibility of fostering commonalities that endure.White men! Please, wake up. You must accept racial equality and value community cooperation and friendship as the main human value. For all of you, community cooperation should eliminate divisions and cleavages within local society. Relations of patronage and exchange that made up the underground economy are potentially highly exploitative. A society that is truly democratic offers a multitude of arenas where authority may be earned. The meaning of freedom of expression as a critical ingredient of democracy is, in addition to its contribution to the dynamism of knowledge, that expression provides the information on which assessments of authority are based. In the affirmative mode, political processes offer the transactional medium for progressive action to address basic human needs, to inspire common action, and to overcome great obstacles. Within its institutional forms, affirmative politics enables individuals to find sources of meaning, the tangible methods of developing and demonstrating competence, and the organizational continuity that makes committed relationships possible. To protect against violations of freedom of expression, and to recognize the primacy of individual dignity, is to acknowledge the nature of human development. White men! Please, wake up. Blackness cannot be provided by an act of public policy. It is an internal achievement that can be facilitated or hampered by social processes. The assembly of meanings that make an identity must be harmonized by the individual. Expressive freedom is required to allow this to happen. White men! Please, wake up from a nightmare called segregation and racism.