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A note from Rabbi Michael Lerner

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You can read this article online at Huffington Post--it appears near the top of
the Home Page of Huffington Post where Rabbi Lerner has a regular column,
bringing our Spiritual Progressive message to the millions of people who read
Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/thepath-to-defeat-racism_b_7652820.html. You are invited to put this on your
homepage and Facebook or other social media pages, tweet about its
message,and send it to your friends and ask them to also send it around.
Although the first few paragraphs say things you certainly know (it was
written for a larger audience), if you read it through to the end you'll see that
Rabbi Lerner and Cat Zavis present a comprehensive strategy to defeat racism
that you won't find elsewhere in the media today (not even the alternative
media) which takes into account psychological, economic, political and spiritual
dimensions and which, if adopted, would actually make a huge difference.
The Path to Defeat Racism
by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis
Racism is the demeaning of an entire group of people and refusing to see them
as fully human in the way we see ourselves and those we deem to be "like" us.
When we fail to see the "other's" humanity, we ascribe to all of them ugly
characteristics that somehow justify treating them with less honor and less
generosity than we would with others who are part of the groups we do see as
fundamentally like us. From this place of separation we justify denying the
"other" equal rights, benefits and caring that all human beings deserve.
Racism in the U.S. has a long history. It was foundational to US expansion
throughout the North American continent, allowing white people to justify to
themselves genocidal policies toward Native Americans, to allow slavery and to
incorporate into our Constitution a provision that would count African slaves as
2/3 of a human being so that Southern States would have higher
representation in the Congress though racists both north and south didn't
think of them as human beings at all.
Racism has persisted as a major factor in American politics even after slavery
and then segregation were abolished. Though racism exists against Jews,
Latinos, Asian Americans and more generally people of color, its most striking
manifestation is in the horrendous treatment of African Americans.
Paul Krugman, in a NY Times column on June 22, 2015, cites the considerable
evidence that people in Southern states (those previously fought the Civil War
in order to preserve their ability to hold slaves) are the core of those in the
U.S. who vote against their own economic well-being rather than support
policies which would also benefit African Americans.
The Republican Party moved from marginality to a powerful force in the US