Tours in the Skin

Posted on September 26, 2003 in Social Justice

Sometimes I wish we could resuit people in different skins like in Black Like Me as a regular exercise so that they had a taste of racism as it was really practised.

But then I think back to the other night when I overheard the conversation between the teenage counter help and the assistant manager at my local Arby’s: the lesson wouldn’t sink in for the kids like George W. Bush because they would know that at the end of the bad experience there would be a return to the luxurious way of life to which they were accustomed.

So again, I suggest that the solution is reinstate the capital gains and estate taxes for those in the uppermost income brackets. Compassion, I believe, arises under conditions of true uncertainty, when you see others as subject to the same viccissitudes as yourself.