Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

Where does racism begin? And how can it finally end? What do these urgent questions have to do with art—and with relation? Read “Art versus Racism,” the new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to be Known! 

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

We are serializing the great lecture Hail, Relation; or, A Study in Poetry, which Eli Siegel gave in 1972. And I will comment on a matter that has to do centrally with relation, and is a horrible mis-seeing of relation. That matter is racism. Since June 17, when 21-year-old Dylann Roof entered a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, sat among the men and women there, then opened fire, murdering nine people—racism has been talked of in the media with somewhat more urgency. The need to end it has always been vitally, utterly urgent.

Aesthetic Realism explains the cause of racism. And, I say soberly and passionately: the study of Aesthetic Realism can end racism. I have written about this fact before; others have. I do so freshly now.

For America to understand racial prejudice, and stop it, there are two Aesthetic Realism principles that our nation needs to study.

The first is this, stated by Mr. Siegel: “The greatest danger or temptation of man is to get a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not oneself; which lessening is Contempt.” Contempt, he showed, “is a continuous, unseen desire” in everyone. This desire to be more by making other things and persons less, is the source of all injustice, from the ordinary to the gigantic. Contempt can be a person’s inner sneer of pleasure in feeling that somebody has bad taste in clothes—because the other’s tasteless outfit shows that we are superior. Contempt is the quiet assumption in millions of households that other families are simply inferior to ours. All over America, family members are eagerly looking down on the neighbors together (even though the same family members can fight among themselves and resent each other).

Contempt makes for things other than racism, but racism always begins with contempt and is contempt. And it won’t be understood until contempt itself—including that which is one’s very own—is looked at and criticized.  >>Read more