Racial and Multicultural Tolerance vs. Economic and Societal Benefits

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Racial and Multicultural Tolerance vs. Economic and Societal Benefits

We exist in a society where intolerance for the racial and cultural differences of others is commonplace, and solidly rooted. Whether you live in the US, Middle East, Europe, or Asia, situations can be found where matters of money, domestic dispute, war, torture, and rape, have been incited or settled based on the ethnicity of parties involved (amnesty.org). Though it has for over a hundred years been the outspoken goal of certain societies to change this environment of unfairness, and in many cases injustice, – with the United States being the forerunner in this endeavor – the change, especially in the past several decades, can be considered modest at best (Lewis Mumford Report).

For years we’ve listened to politicians support visionary ideas of bringing together people of varied ethnic backgrounds. “Until justice is blind to color,” stated Lyndon Johnson during his presidency, “until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skin, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.” Government programs like affirmative action were designed with the hope in mind of them being the keys to closing the gap between the economically and socially superior, and the historically underprivileged (Ravitch). Futurists and creative thinkers have come and gone preaching the idea, the dream, of a time when racial injustices would be a thing of the past, and yet it ironically seems we have a great distance to travel before this becomes reality.

Perhaps it is not the assumed impossibility of closing this gap that keeps people from supporting these dreams. When one considers the motivators of society today, it’s difficul...

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Ravitch, Dianne. “How Affirmative Action Harms Minorities.” Forbes Nov. 1997: 112.

Normand, Roger. “The Palestine Question: Israel’s Economic War in Context.”

Brecht Forum. 25 Jan. 2001 <http://www.brechtforum.org/highlights/israels

%20economic%20war%20in%20context.htm>.

Anonymous. Free Palestine. 1999. 30 Sep. 2002 <http://freepalestine.com/index.htm>.

Bollyn, Christopher. “The Real Cost of US Support for Israel.” Axis of Logic. 20 Sep.

2003. <http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_1648.shtml>.

Anonymous. “The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Basic Facts: Arab Countries versus Israel.”

Israel Science and Technology. 15 Nov. 2003 <http://www.science.co.il/

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