posted 11-11-2001 02:01 AM
When I’m at my most pessimistic, I think that the only reason social change happens is through the aging of youth; People that hold a certain mindset gradually die off and are replaced by younger people who have learned that the world is a different place from what their parents and grandparents saw.Hell, who am I kidding? I think those thoughts when I’m at my least pessimistic. In terms of civil rights and racial harmony, a big part of the change in American social structure probably stems from the fact that younger people see a world that is more multiracial for a number of reasons, not the least among them population shifts and more visibility of the world through technology and mass media. It’s why we refer to notions of racism as “outdated” – it’s because lots of the people that hold them are probably dying off and being replaced by people who couldn’t help but accept the fact that they go to school and church and work with people who don’t look or talk like they do.
That’s a really simplistic idea and there are certainly lots of chicken-and-egg questions that stem from it. But it makes me wonder how much of social change is deliberate and how much just sort of happens because we’re plodding through life trying to make the best of it. What I’d really like to have is some sort of device that measures the positive impact I have on the world, so I know whether to keep bothering. Have all of the rallies and fundraisers and demonstrations that I’ve been a part of had a real impact? Or are the ideas I have just a result of simple common sense, and everyone else eventually comes to the same conclusions I’ve come to?
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posted 11-11-2001 02:00 AM
