Divide and Rule; Unite and Embrace: The Ramifications of Accepting An Unfair Society

 We generally accept that slavery ended after the civil war, and African Americans were never again placed into a position where they'd be working for nothing. This text, however, refutes that. In actuality, many in The United States believe that the penal system is in place not to "correct" offenders' errant behaviors, but to provide cheap or free labor. It's assumed that prisoners are given light jobs such as producing license plates and mailbags, but the truth is very different. The Innocence Project takes a look at what goes on in Angola prison, Louisiana, where more than 5000 people still perform the work that slaves did more than two hundred years ago, and are paid a few cents an hour for it. Is the penal system merely providing another section of society, disenfranchised from the rest, that we shun and throw out as unworthy, valueless citizens? Does that label, "convict" turn them into factory fodder, and ripe for exploitation? Or is our hatred o

 In his Ted Talk lecture, Yuval Noah Harari explains how human beings differ from animals in their ability to coalesce and work together in large numbers. He explains how human beings are unique in that they use fictions in order to come together and agree on a principle which isn't real. Money, for example, is such a fiction, as are corporations and nations. Similarly, human beings forms groups who identify with such fictions. Nations, races, political groups, religions...all abide by rules and beliefs established by the group. And groups vie against each other for power; each group using its own beliefs and values to compare itself to other groups, and accept or reject, or incorporate those beliefs or values into its own.

 We know slavery is an historical wrong. We know human rights abuse is an historical wrong. We know women's lack of autonomy is an historical wrong. We know that homosexuality, and gender rights, have been too long coming to civilization. Nowadays, many more of us are politically aware of the injustices minorities have faced throughout the ages. As we become more aware, the politics of freedom changes, and those who were once slaves, or dehumanized, or disenfranchised, know what is to be seen as equal in society. But is it any different for animals? We enslaved people of color because we could. Elements within human society have controlled and manipulated and subjugated other elements within  society because they could. And they got away with it because they could. But is it any different how we treat animals? We kill and eat, wear, and enslave animals by the millions every day. We wear their skin, and we eat their flesh and organs. We eat their eggs, and drink the milk intended fo

 It's been said that the only thing that truly unites people is a common enemy. How true is that? We divide into groups, into tribes, each tribe's members having affiliation with the next. We know what's common with us: our skin color, our nationality, our gender, our sexual orientation, our interests.  Some of us are Red Sox fans; others White Sox. We might hate the damn greedy, stupid Republicans or the Snowflake bleeding heart Democrats . We're sick of the immigrants taking our jobs , or the goddam queer hanging around our kids. We resent the rich guy who has more money than we'll ever see, or the homeless guy because we think he'll steal from us. We hate the rich Jew , we might think who controls the wealth;or the Muslim , because he's probably supporting terrorism.  In the following clip, from the movie Independence Day, the president is rallying the people not just of America but the whole world to fight the alien invasion. Is this the only real o

 Self confessed bigot Doug Stevenson on bigotry, what makes a bigot, how to deal with your own bigotry, and how to talk to a bigot in this Ted Talk:

 The former Assistant Attorney General of The United States shares his experience of racist cops while he was jogging in DC:

 Why do we hate? Is it just that we fear others that are different to us? Do we fear, and therefore hate the unknown? Is hatred the underlying cause of prejudice, or is it fear? Is the root of hatred fear? The following video explores this and other questions about why we hate:

 In this video, we see what happens when two people realize each has been a victim in some way of the division many of us face in society. Each has seen the other as the enemy, but each managed to get past his beliefs and see what made them both have things in common.

 There are few better examples of the division of society into social hierarchy than the Indian Hindu caste system. The four castes served to create levels within Indian society and date back three thousand years, to 1500 BCE, and yet remnants of it remain throughout India.

 Critical race theory is currently an extremely controversial topic, since its introduction into American schools in recent years. Many states have banned its teaching in school, and in this video Abram X Kendi dispels some misconceptions about it:

 One thing that's always baffled me about one aspect of "race" is the "one drop rule", whereby any person with any ancestor who had been anything other than white or Caucasian was - merely by the slightest presence of any "black" genes - black. And so today we have a former president, Barack Obama, who aside from the fact his mother was Caucasian, is considered to be, even by his own reckoning, black. And yet he is as much "white" as he is "black".  In this CBSN news item, Yaba Blay explains the absurdity of the "one drop" phenomenon, and its history in America and worldwide, where racial purity - a concept rooted in eugenics - continues today, deep in the sub conscious of society. So why do we still accept this nonsensical idea that "black" is an actual race, when a person can be more "white" than black and still be considered black?