Mouths, Ears, Hearts and Minds Make Change

To date, humanity's path through history has been largely shaped by the expected duties of every culture. In his Cosmopolitanism (published 2006) Kwame Appiah describes our duties as citizens in the world in terms of the Cosmopolitan perspective which "starts with what is human in humanity" (Appiah 134). He deduces from this that "cosmopolitan moral judgment requires us to feel about everyone in the world what we feel about our literal neighbors" (Appiah 157). This belief is taken and grounded to the realities of racism in the United States in White Like Me (published 2005) by Tim Wise.

Until recently I did not comprehend how the plight of others related to me if I myself was not (knowingly) actively causing it. Despite this, "the perverse thing about growing up amidst racism is that no matter your own views, no matter how your own commitment to resisting it, you inhale it anyway; you ingest it, inhale it just as surely as you inhale any other environmental pollutant" (Wise 121). I felt that being born of a race other than white was indeed disadvantageous in contemporary America. "Whether or not we are responsible for [unjust social arrangements'] creation, we clearly live with their consequences and the privileges that result" (Wise 61). To make matters worse, being born white, in and of itself grants privileges over people of different races. "Once we begin to acknowledge our privilege as whites, we are immediately confronted with a challenge: namely, what do we do with both the privilege and the knowledge of it?" (Wise 61). My earlier stance was somewhat justified in that I should not feel guilty about privileges over which I have little or no control. Yet the truth of the matter is that I was not fully analyzing things from perspectives other than my own. Further more, I was unaware, and still am to an extent, of what to analyze. I, like many, had "grown accustomed to thinking of the world as divided among warring creeds and cultures, separated from one another by chasms of incomprehension" (Appiah Summary). Cosmopolitanism, however, has taught me that this unnecessary division is not a necessary nature and that "sometimes, familiar values can be intertwined with unfamiliar customs and arrangements" (Appiah 47).

Despite positive complicity in racial issues, bringing about change is possible. In describing the methods by which a white person can fight racism, Wise argues that the first thing to do is to "learn to listen" (Wise 67). This notion can surely, and should be, applied on a global scale. I agree, further, with Appiah's statement that conversation across cultures is good and will bring with it, through exposure, the enlightenment of "what is human about humanity." Socrates' dialectics align with this progression. It can be related that "universal concern and respect for legitimate difference" (Appiah xv) will naturally result through this increased flow of conversation and listening as we begin to know those of other nationalities as well as our own. As it is "our world is far too complicated, and the opportunities for collaboration far too extensive to allow for perfect-or even fairly consistent-resistance by any of us" (Wise 101). "In the human community, as in the national community, we need to develop habits of coexistence" (Appiah xix). Wise believes that