Racism And Micro-Aggressions

People experience racism on a wide scale of intent and severity, from outright violence or hate speech to micro-aggressions. However, the true paradox of the modern age in regards to racism stems from those individuals who believe in racial equality, yet still hold onto prejudices and practice micro-aggressions. These people may now be more influential and pose more of a threat to social progress than those who are outright bigots. Avowed bigots are now immediately denounced and shunned by the media, and understood to be ignoramuses by decent and educated people. However, those decent and educated people who recognize the monstrosity of racism are the same ones committing micro-aggressions and half-heartedly believing in and reinforcing prejudices

Consequently, it is clear as to why it is important that we admit that racism is an alive and thriving force in our communities today, and that we actively commit to continuing discussions of race as opposed to choosing the route most adverse to progress, one which contends that we must simply stop talking about race because it does not exist. The task is to try to understand the practical and actual effects that this concept has. This is the pragmatic way to pursue the issue of race, in the true sense of pragmatic inquiry following from Pierce’s formulation of the pragmatic maxim. Charles Sanders Peirce in “Cognition Series” proclaims that racist sentiments, or any that have stemmed from it “depends on the ultimate decision of the community; so thought is what it is, only by virtue of its addressing a future thought which is in its value as thought identical with it. The existence of thought now depends on what is to be hereafter, dependent on the future thought of the community”. Here Peirce argues that humans lack introspection, that we cannot think without signs and that we cannot conceive the inconceivable, being that we lack the intuition to almost think for ourselves which sets us up to follow the beliefs of others in the

Because the infant stages of the development for a sense of an organized self in man is contingent on the institutions of a community in which he belongs, essentially any ideology shared among a group could determine a future generations’ beliefs. It is almost as if the communities which foster a certain mind set perpetuate its acceptance among the group by simply believing it, whether they themselves adhere to it entirely. This conflict poses a problem in the “Jamesian” way of thought which was fundamentally concerned with freedom given that even his theory of truth was intended to fit his story of a world in which we social individuals are free to be catalyst in the course of history. Radical empiricist William James criticized any kind of geographic or environmental determinism, arguing that while race might be influential, it does not hold our fate. In “The Will to Believe” James proclaims that “the community stagnates without the impulse of the individual", insinuating similar ideals to that of which Mead spoke where perceived reality relies on the support of the community. Essentially, James thought that communities should emphasize growth or development, and he argued that their evolution was in vital ways reliant on the ideas and actions of individual persons. However, unfortunately