Thursday, June 12, 2008

In reaction to today's NYTimes article entitled "American Exception: Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech"...

Syndicated speech and published words are role models for the beliefs and behaviors we adopt as our own; their publication suggests an air of acceptability. We must be responsible with our words, therefore, so that we set a good example for ourselves, our neighbors, and our children to follow.

If we continue to proffer generalities of certain groups, for instance, we are giving credence to a notion that creates a reality that might otherwise have been different. In buttressing biases and preconceptions in our own minds, it is imminent that we will seek confirmation of them in our interactions with others. And by inducing behavioral confirmation of these perhaps erroneous charges, we have killed the potential for a member of that group to ever convey their true self. Do we really want to engineer fate through self-fulfilling prophecy? Is its only use to artificially elevate our own opinions of ourselves so that we can believe we would come out on top if natural selection were founded on a social hierarchy?

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