Haven’t we all dreamt of a world where we truly get along as brothers and sisters? Where we come together in love, in acceptance, in patience and tolerance, and strive to truly help one another?
A world where smiles replace disapproving stares, where kindness replaces hate, where acceptance and equality are given to all regardless of skin color or country of origin, where the confusion around race is brought to light. These ideas are not just a dream, but in actuality are the foundation for any civilized, healthy and moral society.
It’s not a dream we are far from achieving either, and multiple studies have now confirmed a proven way to eliminate racism from society, thereby creating a more compassionate and beautiful world for everyone in it.
Studies Show That Higher Level Education Decreases Racism
Research has shown that higher education levels and higher intelligence levels are connected to decreases in racist opinions and attitudes.[1]
In 2016 researchers from the University of Toronto examined three decades of data from the General Social Survey, which has periodically tested and measured Americans’ attitudes on a wide range of topics since 1972. Of the 44,873 surveyed for verbal ability and education levels, 28.8% of the highest scorers held opinions considered racist, compared to 45.7% of the lowest scorers who held opinions considered to be racist.[1] Head researcher Geoffrey T. Wodtke concluded that, “Higher verbal ability is closely linked to rejection of overtly prejudicial attitudes among cohorts socialized during or after the 1950s and 1960s.”[1]
A study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that 43% of Americans with no college education held anti-semitic beliefs considered racist, compared to 27% with some college education, to just 18% of those with a four-year college degree holding anti-semitic beliefs considered racist.[2]
Another study from Bowling Green University found that as education levels increased, racial tolerance also increased and that racist opinions decreased, concluding that, “higher levels of tolerance are more likely to be found in individuals with higher levels of intellectual development.”[3]
Further studies conducted compared childhood test scores with adulthood racist ideas. In studies by Dr. Hodson and Dr. Bussen, they followed babies from birth in both 1958, and also from 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; then again as adults ages 30 or 33, and their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. The researchers found that low test scores in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood, and that conservative ideologies accounted for much of driving them towards racist attitudes.[4][5]
Cognitive ability; broadly defined as a set of mental skills that allow an individual to learn from experience, adapt to new situations and solve problems, understand and manipulate abstract concepts, and use knowledge to act on the environment, is widely held to have a profoundly liberalizing influence on racial attitudes.[1]
Dr. Wodtke explains that, “Higher cognitive ability promotes tolerance of racial out-groups and a sincere commitment to racial equality. Indeed, several studies now provide evidence that higher cognitive ability is associated with lower anti-black prejudice, lower authoritarianism, greater tolerance of out-groups, and greater support for egalitarian values among whites.”[1][6][7][8][9]
The research shows that when students receive higher education, they develop more tolerant attitudes, and attitudes of racism decrease. Recent pushes for a free college education for all citizens is a wonderful idea to help remove racism from society. Classes devoted solely to ‘understanding race’ are also extremely effective at eliminating racism, helping people understand and become more compassionate towards one another.
Racism does not go away with time, as the great Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. explained; “ ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never,’ ” and “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”[10] Dr. King also lamented the “myth concerning time” in waiting for time to solve racism, calling it a, “tragic misconception of time” to assume that its mere passage “will inevitably cure all ills.”[10] Progress, he said, takes the “tireless efforts” of dedicated people of good will.[10]
Every high school needs to teach a required class on the topic of ‘race’
In order to fully educate students on one of the most dangerously influential subjects in human history; one that they will also be susceptible to, we need a required class on ‘understanding race’ within the public education system. To protect students from ideas promoting racism, discrimination, bullying, violence, and to correct the dangerous and false ideas within racism that continually are passed down through generations of family members who are not educated on the topic, a class teaching accurate truths about race is desperately needed to eliminate racism from society. We need a required class on ‘race’ within the public education system to challenge and correct the old ideas and stereotypes related to ‘race’ which originated from the days of slavery for profit, and from the former U.S. Confederacy, to ultimately create a healthy and compassionate society for everyone, free from the terrors of racism.
Racism is the single, most dangerous threat to American society that has ever existed.
When considering if it is important to acknowledge and deal with the problem of racism by creating a required public high school class, two key factors must be considered:
- Has the idea of ‘race’ impacted human history in any significant ways? and,
2. Has it been dangerous or a threat to humanity in the past, and is it still a danger today?
Three historical and current examples provide us an answer to these two questions:
‘Race’ Based Slavery
For hundreds of years in America, the painful bondage, forced labor and inhumane cruelty of slavery[6] imprisoned millions of men, women and children under the guise that their ‘race’ and black skin categorized them as sub-human property, rather than as equal human beings. Over 2 million people died in unimaginable conditions aboard slave ships in the Atlantic,[7] Over 4 million people died while being kidnapped and captured from their homes in Africa and led in chains on “death-marches” to the ships,[7] and an untold number of African American slaves living in captivity in America were murdered at the hands of slave owners who attempted to forcibly claim ownership over other human beings. For 150 years in America after the abolishment of slavery, the American south developed into one of the world’s most overtly racist societies attempting to further abuse Americans with black skin.[5] To this very day, hate crimes and hate speech are carried out in the name of white supremacy in the U.S., and America has taken little to no action to provide accurate ‘race’ based education in its public schooling system to solve and prevent these horrors from continuing to happen to our brothers and sisters.
The Greatest Historical Threat To America: The Civil War Fought Over ‘Race’ Based Slavery
The greatest threat to the United States of America was undoubtedly when the nation divided into two during the civil war; when conflicting ideas over ‘race’-based slavery tore the nation apart.[8] As America’s President of the time, Abraham Lincoln, once said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”[8]
The southern half of America left the United States and then declared war against the USA, causing the bloodiest war ever in American history. Over 600,000 American soldiers died, consisting of nearly one fifth of the entire southern confederate male population.[9] For over 150 years after the Confederacy’s defeat and until today, southern organizations have continued to enact racist laws, segregation, gerrymandering, institutionalized racism, a discriminatory private prison complex, and have continued to spread racist public education to American citizens. Even into the 21st century USA, in states like Texas, public school textbooks educate children that black people were not slaves, but rather were “indentured servants,” and that Mexican-Americans want to “destroy American society.”[10]
World War II: 85 Million Dead After White Supremacists Takeover Germany
In the 1940’s, in the largest war the world has ever seen that left an estimated 85 million people dead,[12] World War II centered around the German Nazi party’s belief that their citizens were a superior ‘Aryan race’ and that other ‘races’ were only fit for death, submission, deportation and slavery. False and twisted ideas that claimed religious Judaic beliefs somehow turned people within a religious following into an inferior biological ‘race’ of ‘Jews’ led to the cruelest torture, abuse, and genocide the world has ever seen; where over 6 million men women and children were tragically killed over an untrue and dangerous idea of ‘race.’
The inaccurate idea that human biological ‘races’ exist has significantly altered modern human history and has caused enormous and tragic numbers of innocent people to be discriminated against and killed. ‘Race’ is a false idea. A false idea created before the days of science, which has been proven to not be a real biological grouping by scientists today, and which is arguably the most dangerous idea ever invented by mankind.
When considering the question of ‘Is it important to acknowledge and deal with the unchallenged problem of racism’ the answer is a resounding:
Yes.
The greatest tragedies and threats in American history have all been centered around racism: slavery, the civil war, and world war II. Yet thankfully, there is hope! As we’ve seen, studies have proven an effective way to eliminate racism through education, which will help create a more compassionate world for us all.
The Solution: Education
The results of racism have been seen in many devastating and compassionless expressions in recent history, and racism continues to be spread, unchallenged, in America as America’s public education system has all but ignored the desperate need for an accurate education on the subject of ‘race’ to be taught. Racism isn’t going away by itself, and racism itself is very dangerous and tragic. Racism has caused the largest amount of American deaths; at home and worldwide due to war, and each generation is capable of continuing this terrible cycle of ‘racial’ violence when they are left uneducated on the subject of ‘race.’
The youth of America are left as sheep amongst the wolves without a proper education on the topic of race; left being educated in racist ways of thinking through uninformed family members and an often ‘racially’ charged media, and are doomed to accept ‘racial’ stereotypes from the past without an accurate public education on ‘race’ to challenge their ways of thinking.
Every generation needs to be taught the same lessons regarding ‘race’ and given a compassionate view of human variation.
Every generation need an education on the scientific evidence which proves that ‘race’ is not a real biological grouping, but rather is only a false imagined social idea, created before the days of modern science. They need to be taught the human history related to the dangers and cruelty of ‘race related ideas’ and of racism, and need to be taught the scientifically backed evidence that proves that all humans, regardless of skin color, are equal in terms of ability for intelligence and social behavior.
Imagine a world where the public education system teaches students the facts about ‘race’, and where racism finally dissipates and a safe society for everyone is created. Societies will be more compassionate, safer, and countries will be protected from the threat of possible future wars centered around racism, as have happened in the very recent past. It’s not a matter of time, it’s a matter of education.
Let’s support the creation of a required public high school class teaching the facts related to ‘race’ so that we all may truly understand race and move beyond the compassionless and ancient ideas of racism.
Join us at Understanding Compassion by taking our free online course of Understanding Race.
You are Loved.
