[lbo-talk] Obama's Philadelphia race speech and the American Creed

Charles Brown charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu Mar 20 07:03:31 PDT 2008


Miles Jackson : But the point here is that attitude change is a product of changing social conditions. The social psychological research on this is quite

clear: attitudes are the outcome, social conditions are the cause. --Example: Jim Crow didn't end in the South because all the white southerners "changed their attitudes" about race; white southerners eventually changed their attitudes about segregation to adapt to new legally enforced social conditions.

Perhaps the most pernicious myth about social change is the quintessentially American notion that social change is predicated on changing individual attitudes.

Miles

^^^^ CB: Miles point reminds of the following:

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice



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