It Is in Contempt that the Root of Racism Lies

I was sickened to read about the killing of TyRon Mark Lewis by Officer James K. Knight in St. Petersburg early this fall. As a Black man with relatives in Ft. Lauderdale, I want your readers to know what I am grateful to have learned from Eli Siegel, the great educator, historian, and founder of Aesthetic Realism: the cause of racism is contempt. He defined contempt as the “disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world.”

Contempt is as ordinary as a family saying, “We are better than that family next door.” On a larger scale, contempt has people of one race or religion look down on people different from them.

“As soon as you have contempt,” Mr. Siegel stated, “as soon as you don’t want to see another person as having the fulness that you have, you can rob that person, hurt that person, kill that person.” This explains both young Lewis’s and officer Knight’s actions that fall night.

In our unjust economy, young people feel they have no future and that no one cares, not even their parents who are too busy working two or three jobs. So teenagers can wrongly feel justified having contempt — such as stealing cars.

And, police officers, who want to do good, also feel they “own” a neighborhood they should be protecting.

I learned that there are two kinds of anger — one just, which makes for pride, the other unjust, which makes for shame. Anger at injustice, Aesthetic Realism teaches, opposes contempt and comes from the deepest desire in every person: to respect the world honestly. The civil rights movement arose from a just anger. I’ve had a proud anger at the prejudice and economic hardship which Blacks had to endure and with the murders of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy.

However, I used my anger at injustice to feel I had a right to be angry towards all people. I attended a mostly White college in upper New York State. I was angry at how I was seen and I regret that I used my anger to have contempt for White students and felt they were not good enough to befriend me. I also felt superior to Black students because I felt they were not street smart as I was. I relished my anger but, inside, I felt cold and was cruel to people. Thank God I later learned from Aesthetic Realism that it was my own contempt that made me lonely, bitter and deeply unsure of myself.

Studying Aesthetic Realism, my contempt and unjust anger are criticized and my respect for the world is encouraged. Because I see the feelings of people of all races as deep as my own, and I see that I am more like them than different, I am kinder and truly proud.

This is headline news! There will be no rest, only a hiding of volatile feelings, until contempt as the cause of racism is studied. Community leaders and police commissions can evaluate race relations until Kingdom come but, if contempt is not understood, these vicious acts will continue.

With beautiful prose, Eli Siegel stated, “It will be found that Black and White Man have the same goodnesses, the same temptations, and can be criticized in the same way. The skin may be different, but the aorta is quite the same.” When America studies this we will have safe and proud lives!